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 Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 8:02 am Post subject: |
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The Door
Poems
Hardcover
By Margaret Atwood
| Quote: | MOURNING FOR CATS
We get too sentimental
over dead animals.
We turn maudlin.
But only those with fur,
only those who look like us,
at least a little.
Those with big eyes,
eyes that face front.
Those with smallish noses
or modest beaks.
No one laments a spider.
Nor a crab.
Hookworms rate no wailing.
Fish neither.
Baby seals make the grade,
and dogs, and sometimes owls.
Cats almost always.
Do we think they are like dead children?
Do we think they are a part of us,
the animal soul
stashed somewhere near the heart,
fuzzy and trusting,
and vital and on the prowl,
and brutal most of the time,
and also stupid?
(Why almost always cats? Why do dead cats
call up such ludicrous tears?
Why such deep mourning?
Because we can no longer
see in the dark without them?
Because we're cold
without their fur? Because we've lost
our hidden second skin,
the one we'd change into
when we wanted to have fun,
when we wanted to kill things
without a second thought,
when we wanted to shed the dull thick weight
of being human?)
(-- pgs. 11-12) |
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| Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2008 8:45 am Post subject: |
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The New Yorker
Magazine Subscription
Tits-Up in a Ditch
By Annie Proulx
June 9 and 16/08
| Quote: | "Had me some luck today. Goddam cow got herself tits-up in the ditch couple days ago. Dead, time I found her," he said in a curiously satisfied tone, squinting through faded lashes, winking his eyes, the same aquamarine as those of the wayward Shaina.
"Not every man would say that is luck," Bonita said wearily. She went to the sink, stepping over Bum, Verl's ancient heeler crippled by cow kicks, and began scrubhbing out the only pot large enough to boil potatoes in quantity, a pot she washed and used several times a day.
"It is, in a way of speakin."
She couldn't have puzzled that one out even if she had had the time. With Verl, it was one thing after another. He went into the national forest to cut wood every fall, and she knew that he someday would cut himself in half with his cranky old chain saw. She almost hoped he would.
For Verl Lister everything turned on luck, and he had experienced very little of the good kind. ... (-- p. 82) |
| Quote: | | They passed the Match ranch, unchanged, and turned onto Sixteen Mile. The days were shortening, but there was still plenty of light, the top of Table Butte, layered bands of buff, gamboge, and violet, gilded by the setting sun. The shallow river, as yellow as lemon rind, lay flaccid between denuded banks. The dying sun hit the willows, transforming them into fiery wands. Light reflected off the road as from glass. They seemed to be travelling through a hammered red landscape in which ranch buildings appeared dark and sorrowful. She knew what blood-soaked ground was, knew that severed arteries squirted like the back-yard hose. A dog came out of the ditch and ran into a stubble field. They passed the Persa ranch, where the youngest son had drowned in last spring's flood. She realized that every ranch she passed had lost a boy, lost boys early and late, boys smiling, sure in their risks, healthy, tipped out of the current of life by liquor and acceleration, rodeo smash-ups, bad horses, deep irrigation ditches, high trestles, tractor rollovers, and unsecured truck doors. Her boy, too. This was the waiting darkeness that surrounded ranch boys, the dangerous growing up that cancelled out their favored status. The trip along this road was a roll call of grief. Wind began to lift the fine dust, and the sun set in haze. (-- p. 95) |
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| Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 9:47 am Post subject: |
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From Impossible Odds:
The New York Times Magazine
But not without the dull clunker daily
Will Dad Ever Do His Share?
Some fathers do. And throw over their old lives. And draw up elaborate charts. Inside the equal parenting movement.
By Lisa Belkin
June 18/08
| Quote: | Social scientists know in remarkable detail what goes on in the average American home. And they have calculated with great precision how little has changed in the roles of men and women. Any way you measure it, they say, women do about twice as much around the house as men.
The most recent figures from the University of Wisconsin’s National Survey of Families and Households show that the average wife does 31 hours of housework a week while the average husband does 14 — a ratio of slightly more than two to one. If you break out couples in which wives stay home and husbands are the sole earners, the number of hours goes up for women, to 38 hours of housework a week, and down a bit for men, to 12, a ratio of more than three to one. That makes sense, because the couple have defined home as one partner’s work.
But then break out the couples in which both husband and wife have full-time paying jobs. There, the wife does 28 hours of housework and the husband, 16. Just shy of two to one, which makes no sense at all.
The lopsided ratio holds true however you construct and deconstruct a family. “Working class, middle class, upper class, it stays at two to one,” says Sampson Lee Blair, an associate professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo who studies the division of labor in families.
“And the most sadly comic data is from my own research,” he adds, which show that in married couples “where she has a job and he doesn’t, and where you would anticipate a complete reversal, even then you find the wife doing the majority of the housework.”
Housework, in this context, is defined as things like cooking, cleaning, yardwork and home repairs. Child care is a whole separate category — one that is even more skewed. The social scientist’s definition of child care “is attending to the physical needs of a child — dressing a child, cooking for a child, feeding and cleaning them,” Blair says. It doesn’t include the fun stuff, like playing and reading and kissing good night.
Where the housework ratio is two to one, the wife-to-husband ratio for child care in the United States is close to five to one. As with housework, that ratio does not change as much as you would expect when you account for who brings home a paycheck. In a family where Mom stays home and Dad goes to work, she spends 15 hours a week caring for children and he spends 2. In families in which both parents are wage earners, Mom’s average drops to 11 and Dad’s goes up to 3. Lest you think this is at least a significant improvement over our parents and grandparents, not so fast. “The most striking part,” Blair says, “is that none of this is all that different, in terms of ratio, from 90 years ago.” (-- pgs. 46-47) |
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| Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 1:54 pm Post subject: |
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The New Yorker
Magazine Subscription
Fighting and Writing
The loved and the unlovable in "Cyrano de Bergerac"
By John Lahr
Nov. 12/07
| Quote: | The word “panache” was adopted into English only after the phenomenal success of the French playwright Edmond Rostand’s 1897 “heroic comedy” “Cyrano de Bergerac,” whose flamboyant, big-nosed hero took revenge on his ugliness by making a legend of his physical and intellectual prowess. “I’m going to take the simplest approach to life of all. . . . I’ve decided to excel in everything,” Cyrano announces in the current superb revival of the play (at the Richard Rodgers, under the deft direction of David Leveaux). “Panache” means, literally, the tuft of feathers on Cyrano’s cap; figuratively, it refers to his sumptuous impertinence. The word is both Cyrano’s dying breath and the play’s last word—an epitaph, as well as an envoi, to his dandyism. ...
Just as a dandy wants it both ways—to rebel against society and to be accepted by it on his own terms—so does Rostand. In the last act, he jumps fifteen years ahead, to a monastery where Roxane has rusticated herself after Christian’s death and where Cyrano visits her every week, living out the old romantic formula of suffering without reward. Until Roxane susses that Cyrano is the author of Christian’s letters, he never confesses his love; like the autumn leaves that contrive to “go in grace” as they fall, he also hides, at first, his mortal wound. For Roxane, he musters a rueful little joke. “I’ve missed everything—even my death,” he says. But his loss is greater than that. By missing out on love, he has also missed out on life, or almost. “I never had much acquaintance with the sweetness of woman,” he tells Roxane, finally speaking his heart. “But—and, God bless you for this, for ever and ever I have had one friend different from the few others.” “I never loved but one man in my life,” Roxane tells him. “Now I must lose him twice.” Even in his dying, Cyrano, ever the dandy, dares with tact. “And make those tears which have been wholly his, / Mine too, just a little, mine,” he says. That sad, modest wish—to be kept in mind—strikes a resounding note of grief and gratitude that echoes down the ages. (-- pgs. 96-97) |
Cyrano
DVD
French with yellow sub-titles that sometimes work
... the role that made British actor Sir Derek Jacobi a Broadway heartthrob:
Cyrano de Bergerac
Translated by Anthony Burgess
Directed by Terry Hands
VHS only
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| Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2008 10:06 am Post subject: |
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Harper's
Magazine Subscription
Paper Pushkin
[Resignation]
September, 2008
| Quote: | From two 1824 letters by Aleksandr Pushkin to Aleksandr Kaznacheev. The first is in response to an assignment to investigate the extermination of locusts that Pushkin refused to undertake; the second concerns his resignation from the Russian Foreign Ministry, where he worked for seven years. The letters are included in Pushkin: Documents Toward a Biography 1799–1829, published last year in Russia by Iskusstvo. Count Woronzof, the deputy authority of the province of Bessarabia, was Pushkin’s boss. Kaznacheev was the head of Woronzof’s chancellery. Pushkin later admitted to a friend that he lied about his aneurysm in order to gain his freedom. Translated from the Russian and the French by Simona Schneider.
| Quote: | Esteemed Aleksandr Ivanovich,
Bureaucratic procedure is entirely foreign to me. I don't even know if I have the right to respond to His Higness's orders. Whatever may happen, I trust in your indulgence and must dare to give an honest explanation of my situation.
For seven years I was remiss in my duties: I did not author a single paper, I did not communicate with any superior. These seven years, as you well know, were totally wasted. Complaints would be inappropriate on my part. I set obstacles in my own path and chose a different goal. For God's sake, don't think that I looked upon poetic creation with the childish vanity of a rhymester or as a sensitive man's respite: it is simply my craft, an honest type of industry, which earns me my livelihood and independence. I think Count Woronzof won't wish to deprive me of either the former or the latter.
I'll be told that because I receive 700 rubles a year I am obliged to serve. You know that it is possible to be part of the book trade only in Moscow or Saint Petersburg, as the journalists, censors, and booksellers are there; I constantly have to decline the most advantageous offers for the sole reason that I am located far away from the capital. It suits the government to compensate me for my losses in some way, and thus I receive those 700 rubles not as a functionary's salary but as the allowance of an exiled prisoner. I amprepared to refuse them if I cannot be in control of my own time and occupation. I'm going into these details because I value the opinion of Count Woronzof, as I do yours, as I do the opinion of any honest person.
I know this letter is enough to destroy me, as they say.
(If the Count orders me to send in my resignation, I am ready; but I feel that I am losing a lot and am not expecting to gain anything.)
One last word: you perhaps are not aware that I have an aneurysm. For eight years already I have been carrying death with me. I can show evidence from my doctor. Is it really not possible to leave me in peace for the remainder of my life, which surely won't be prolonged?
Please accept my deepest respect and heartfelt devotion.
Staff Secretary
Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin |
(-- pgs. 27-28) |
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| Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 1:13 pm Post subject: |
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Canadian Geographic
Magazine Subscription
The lost Eden of Okanagan
Vineyards are replacing orchards, recreation is replacing ranching and retirees are replacing rattlesnakes in the arid ponderosa hills of the Okanagan Valley
July/August, 2008
| Quote: | ... The houses and condos will be bought up eagerly by a wealthy generation of human migrants from Alberta or Australia. They come to play in Canada's most perfect valley, towing wakboard boats, snowmobiles, quads. "Man must recreate," says Sarell resignedly.
Their televisions and air conditioners will require a bigger power line through this piece of snake habitat. Their blossoming yards, ensuite bathrooms and golf courses will demand more water from this semi-arid country. More fine restaurants, more landfille, more marina slips and muffler shops. (Biologist Mike) Sarell returns his catch to its rocky lair. He does not think the night snake's presence here is a 'showstopper,' consultancy parlance for a particular flora or fauna that can halt development. If an exceedingly rare desert night snake cannot do it, I ask Sarell, what would? He thinks about it for a moment before responding.
"Recession," he says. (emphasis added)...
"Water is going to be a problem," says (historical geographer Wayne) Wilson, as does anyone you meet in the valley. Nestled in a rain shadow of the Coast Mountains, the Okanagan dodges British Columbia's famous onslaught of maritime precipitation. The valley is replenished by rain or snow from higher in the watershed, the Okanagan Highlands of the Interior Plateau. However, much of the runoff is lost to evaporation in Canada's driest locale, where the Great Basin Desert biome extends it warm reach. What little surface water does arrive is 100 per cent managed. About 70 per cent is used for agriculture, which contributes almost one-quarter of the province's total agricultural output. Homeowners compete with wild plants and animals for the rest.
Newcomers mostly fail to understand how a valley blessed with so many lakes - including Okanagan Lake, more than 100 kilometres long and deep enough, at 230 metres, to hide a mythical monster called Ogopogo - could ever be short of water. However, the lake has an extremely low flushing rate of more than 52 years; only the top one metre or so is replenished annually. The whole valley is dry - much of it is semi-arid, and significant portions are true desert - which is not obvious in what seems like a watery place. Virtually all its smaller upland waters are dammed or diverted, which has contributed ot the decimation of Okanagan Lake's once plentiful Kokanee salmon. A 1994 study suggested that existing water in the valley could support a maximum population of 425,000 people, provided agriculture was scaled back significantly. (emphasis added)
... Once the section linking 'the Coke' to Kelowna was completed in 1991, the $1 billion toll highway across the Cascades effectively brought the Okanagan into Vancouver's backyard, reducing the trip to less than four hours. Transport upgrades continute today. The low-volume floating bridge across Okanagan Lake has been replaced with a soaring new one named for the Kelowna-born Bennett. Meanwhile, a runway upgrade at Kelowna's airport will soon accommodate the largest Airbus jumbos direct from Europe and Asia. (-- pgs. 44, 52-53) |
Yee-haw. ...
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| Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 9:52 am Post subject: |
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Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet
Paperback
Translated and with a Foreward by Stephen Mitchell
| Quote: | | No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. (-- pgs. 6-7) |
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| Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 9:26 am Post subject: |
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What the Living Won't Let Go
Paperback
By Fellow Frostback Lorna Crozier
| Quote: | WILDFLOWERS
Wild Western Bergamot, Larkspur,
Closed Gentian near the Manitoba border,
Windflowers in the Cypress Hills.
I read the names out loud,
flip page after page as if the past were
a botanist with whom I've made a pact.
Evening Primrose, Yarrow, Wild Flax -
what would Sorrow look like, what fruit
would it bear? I have in mind no colour.
Yellow, red, or blue it would bloom
in rich abundance this July, its flowers
a burden, a fragrant heaviness,
between my fingers its leaves softely
furred, the fine hairs of a lover's wrist.
If I touched the sepals with my tongue
I'd say anise and then repeat it, an aftertaste,
a hint of time. Wild near the marsh
I find a kind of Rue where only yesterday
leopard-spotted frogs leapt in imitation
of the heart's strange fondness
for what is lost.
(-- p. 96) |
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| Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 11:48 am Post subject: |
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From Preparing for Winter Olympics 2010 - B.C. 'BILLY-style:
B.C. 'BILLIES 'jack' afresh over Olympics 2010:
Whistler Blackcomb's costly new Peak 2 Peak redubbed 'Peak to Creek' after leaky gondola tower's collapse
cbc.ca
Freezing water cracked gondola tower joint: Whistler staff
'Ice-jacking' caused failure, says official
Dec. 17/08
| Quote: | Officials at the Whistler Blackcomb ski resort north of Vancouver say the collapse of a gondola tower was caused by water seeping into a welded and bolted joint and cracking the metal as it froze. (emphasis added) Doug Forseth, the senior vice-president of operations at Whistler Blackcomb, said experts inspected the damaged tower overnight. The support towers on similar Doppelmayr brand lifts, including the Wizard and Solar chairlifts, were checked and found without any problems. Provincial safety official were expected to conduct a second safety inspection with resort staff Wednesday morning before those lifts were reopened. ...
The damaged tower was constructed from two large pieces of metal tubing that were welded and bolted together, but somehow water managed to get inside the joint, said Forseth. The ice build-up caused the tower splice to rupture, an extremely unusual situation referred to as "ice-jacking," he said.
Thirteen people suffered minor injuries on Tuesday when one of the towers that supports the cables on the Excalibur Gondola near Fitzsimmons Creek partially collapsed, leaving three gondola cars dangling in mid-air. People were left stranded in the cold for about three hours while fire crews went gondola to gondola removing the 53 passengers from the 30 trapped cars.
The gondola undergoes an extensive safety check every year by the B.C. Safety Authority, and the last check was done within the past six months, according to a statement issued by Blackcomb.
The Excalibur Gondola, which runs from Whistler Village up Blackcomb Mountain, was built in 1994. It has an upper and lower section. The upper section of the gondola, which is independent of the lower section, was unaffected by the incident but was cleared immediately of guests. |
The Georgia Strait
Earnest Corporate Tabloid
Ice-jacking cited for failure of Excalibur Gondola at Blackcomb Mountain
By Charlie Smith
Dec. 17/08
| Quote: | ... The accident comes at a terrible time for Whistler Blackcomb, which is owned by Intrawest Corp. Last week, the resort opened its new $52-million Peak 2 Peak Gondola, which transports skiers over a 4.4-kilometre span between the tops of Whistler and Blackcomb mountains. At its highest point, the Peak 2 Peak Gondola is more than 400 metres above the valley floor.
The resort was preparing for the lucrative Christmas skiing season. However, if the Excalibur Gondola remains out of service, it will have an impact on the number of skiers that can be brought into the alpine areas of Blackcomb Mountain.
In addition, Whistler is cohosting the 2010 Winter Olympics with Vancouver, and this incident brings bad publicity just as the resort is trying to capitalize on increased global media interest in its facilities.
Finally, Intrawest’s parent company, hedge-fund manager Fortress Investment Group, has had a terrible year as a result of the global financial meltdown. On December 16, the New York-based investment company's stock closed at US$1.22, down from a 52-week high of US$17.32.
Fortress has been the lender for the billion-dollar Olympic Village project in Vancouver. The local city council recently provided a $100-million loan guarantee to try to ensure that the development will be completed in time for the 2010 Games. City officials have estimated that the project is $70 million over budget. |
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| Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2009 1:45 pm Post subject: |
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The Future of Disability in America
Hardcover
Committee on Disability in America
Board on Health Sciences Policy
Institute of Medicine of the National Academies
Edited by Marilyn J. Field and Alan M. Jette
| Quote: | Employment Trends Among Adults with Disabilities
Most studies of disability and employment have found some reductions in the rates of employment among adults with disabilities over time (DeLeire, 2000; Acemoglu and Angrist, 2001; Bound and Waidmann, 2002; Houtenville and Burkhauser, 2004; Jolls and Prescott, 2004; Moon and Shin, 2006), but some analyses have reported increases in the rates of employment among individuals with severe functional limitations who report the ability and desire to work (Kruse and Schur, 2003). Consistent with the controversies over measurement, the interpretation of data on employment trends among adults with disabilities has generated considerable disagreement (see Appendix E). For example, some suggest that declines in employment reflect employer anxiety about the requirements of Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which was passed in 1990 (DeLeire, 2000; Acemoglu and Angrist, 2001). Others attribute the declines to changes in the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and SSI programs during the 1980s that liberalized eligibility criteria (Houtenville and Burkhauser, 2004).
Figure 3-4 shows the trends in employment rates for people with and people without activity limitations. Overall, the graph suggests an increasing gap between the level of employment for people without activity limitations and the level for people with activity limitations. The recessions of the early 1990s and 2000s appear to have affected all groups, but people with activity limitations have not experienced the more recent recovery in employment levels shown for people without such limitations. In addition, as employment rates among those with limitations have fallen faster than the rates among those without such limitations, the gap in employment between the two groups has grown. (From Chapter Three, Disability Trends, pgs. 85-86) |
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| Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 11:05 am Post subject: |
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The Post-American World
Hardcover
By Fareed Zakaria
| Quote: | We are now living through the third great power shift of the modern era. It could be called "the rise of the rest." Over the past few decades, countries all over the world have been experiencing rates of economic growth that were once unthinkable. While they have had booms and busts, the overall trend has been unambiguously upward. This growth has been most visible in Asia but is no longer confined to it. That is why to call this shift "the rise of Asia" does not describe it accurately. In 2006 and 2007, 124 countries grew at a rate of 4 percent or more. That includes more than 30 countries in Africa, two-thirds of the continent. Antoine van Agtmael, the fund manager who coined the term "emerging markets," has identified the 25 companies most likely to be the world's next great multinationals. His list includes four companies each from Briazil, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan; three from India; two from China; and one each from Argentina, Chile, Malaysia, and South Africa.
Look around. The tallest building in the world is now in Taipei, and it will soon be overtaken by one being built im Dubai. The world's richest man is Mexican, and its largest publicly traded corporation is Chinese. The world's biggest plane is built in Russia and Ukraine, its leading refinery is under construction in India, and its largest factories are all in China. By many measures, London is becoming the leading financial center, and the United Arab Emirates is home to the most richly endowed investment fund. Once quintessentially American icons have been appropriated by foreigners. The world's largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. Its number one casino is not in Las Vegas but in Macao, which has also overtaken Vegas in annual gambling revenues. The biggest movie industry, in terms of both movies made and tickets sold, is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Even shopping, America's greatest sporting activity, has gone global. Of the top ten malls in the world, only one is in the United States; the world's biggest is in Beijing. Such lists are arbitrary, but it is striking that only ten years ago, America was at the top in many, if not most, of these categories.
... in fact, the share of people living on a dollar a day or less plummeted from 40 percent in 1981 to 18 percent in 2004, and is estimated to fall to 12 percent by 2015. China's growth alone has lifted more than 400 million people out of poverty. Poverty is falling countries housing 80 percent of the world's population. ... In .... China, India, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, Turkey, Kenya, and South Africa - the poor are slowly being absorbed into productive and growing economies. For the first time ever, we are witnessing genuinely global growth. ... It is the birth of a new global order.
A related aspect of this new era is the diffusion of power from states to other actors. The "rest" that is rising includes many nonstate actors Groups and individuals have been empowered, and hierarchy, centralization, and control are being undermined. Functions that were once controlled by governments are now shared with international bodies like the World Trade Organization and the European Union. Non-governmental groups are mushrooming every day on every issue in every country. Corporations and capital are moving from place to place, finding the best location in which to do business, rewarding some governments while punishing others. Terrorists like Al Qaeda, drug cartels, insurgents, and militias of all kinds are finding space to operate within the nooks and crannies of the international system. Power is shifting away from nation-states, up, down, and sideways. In such an atmosphere, the traditional applications of national power, both economic and military, have become less effective.
The emerging international system is likely to be quite different from those that have preceded it. One hundred years ago, there was a multipolar order run by a collection of European governments, with constantly shifting alliances, rivalries, miscalculations, and wars. Then came the bipolar duopoly of the Cold War, more stable in many ways, but with the superpowers reacting and overreacting to each other's every move. Since 1991, we have lived under an American imperium, a unique unipolar world in which the the open global economy has expanded and accelerated dramatically. This expansion is now driving the next change in the nature of the international order. ((From the chapter entitled, The Rise of the Rest, pgs. 2-4) |
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| Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 10:33 am Post subject: |
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Vanity Fair
Magazine Subscription
Eloise Sheds a Tear
Israeli billionaire Isaac Tshuva and his C.E.O. Miki Naftali’s plan to put condominiums in the Plaza hotel hit a New York nerve. How dare they mess with the magical home of the Oak Bar, the Palm Court, and Eloise? Ultimately, the developers’ 181 apartments were nsapped up, sight unseen, for record prices – but their troubles were just beginning. Evgenia Peretz investigates the bitter accusations and lawsuits that are turning a fantasy into a nightmare.
January, 2009
| Quote: | ... With every hole they opened, ancient concrete came crumbling down. Steel beams were discovered in the most unexpected places. It wasn’t long before the project devolved into a change-order maelstrom. The walkouts, the lawsuits, and the finger-pointing began. (emphasis added)
The first to walk was F. W. Sims Inc., a Long Island air-conditioning company, which is now suing El-Ad, claiming it is owed $3.7 million for original contract work and change orders. “They didn’t finish the job!” says Naftali. “They claim that they will not finish the job unless we will pay them extra money.… So now you’re looking at yourself and you say, ‘O.K.—excuse my French—I’m in deep shit. He’s blackmailing me!’” An attorney for F. W. Sims says, “The only extra money F. W. Sims has sought is for the extra work that [El-Ad] directed it to perform.”
Next to go was the architectural firm the Philips Group, which had been hired to work on the retail space, and which has essentially charged the same thing as Sims. “They put people that didn’t know what they were doing!” counters Naftali. “And then, all of a sudden, they started to ask for change orders, O.K.? Hundreds of thousands of dollars when—hello?! You need to design for me. You didn’t design the space. This is not a kindergarten.… We have to pay millions of dollars to fix their mistakes? It doesn’t make sense.” El-Ad is now suing them, claiming it had to re-do TPG’s railings, badly installed lighting, “unsightly” ceiling drop, and a koi pond that was not properly waterproofed. TPG answers that the heap of unforeseen problems with the building was the responsibility of no one but El-Ad. ...
The lawsuits, the walk-offs, the phone calls from retail real-estate brokers and contractors wanting to know where their checks are, none of it could have happened at a worse time for El-Ad, which, like many real-estate developers, is being hit by the downturn in the economy. Construction of its Plaza Las Vegas casino-condominium-hotel-mall, the property for which El-Ad paid $1.2 billion, is now on hold until the spring of 2010. The Carlyle on Wilshire, El-Ad’s luxury condominium in Los Angeles, has sold only 10 units out of 78. (emphasis added) A year ago, El-Ad had a high bond rating with Standard & Poor’s Israeli partner Maalot. Four months ago, the rating was removed from Maalot’s Web site, reportedly at the request of El-Ad after Maalot added the company to its “watch list” for a possible downgrading. (El-Ad claims its rating is still AA.) Delek Group, the backbone of Tshuva’s fortune, has tumbled dramatically on the Israeli stock market. After all this, it seems like Naftali is hurting. “I invested my best three, four years trying to put [the Plaza] together, and believe me, I take it personally,” he says. “I go over there and I see many things that I’m not happy with, either the service or whatever. This is not still good—I take it really personally, because I want it to be perfect.”
Naftali deserves credit for doing some work that may not be so readily visible. The state of the building when El-Ad bought it “was horrible,” he says. “Sixty to 65 rooms were out of order because of water leaks. The Palm Court on a rainy day? They put buckets over there to collect the rain.” The company spent $30 million repairing the roof alone. ...
According to an inside source with knowledge of the materials used in the hotel rooms, instead of Italian marble for the bathroom floors and walls, El-Ad used low-density marble from China (about 50 cents a square foot). The crown moldings in the rooms aren’t actually wood or plaster; they’re fiberglass and run from $2 to $7 a foot. (High-end crown molding can cost $70 a foot, and real plaster molding many multiples of that.) The so-called mahogany closet is in fact just a thin layer of mahogany veneer over industrial particleboard. “The developer was looking for ways to save,” admits a designer with Gal Nauer Architects. The carpet in the hallway on the penthouse level was cut and cobbled together—a practice known as “patch-n-match.” (The interior designer of the renovation and hotel representatives stand by the materials used in the project.) (emphasis added)
Some of El-Ad’s other residential condominiums haven’t gotten high marks, either. According to Michael Chaney, the board president of 224 West 18th Street, an El-Ad condominium known as Campiellos, the residents have discovered sewage pipes held up by a stack of bricks, unprotected live electrical wires within walls, buckling oak floors, and guardrails too short and not up to New York City’s building code. (El-Ad says it is reviewing the problems at Campiellos.)
And so, when some of the new Plaza residents first laid eyes on their apartments, the reactions were like Extreme Makeover, Home Edition—only the total opposite. ...
For the other residents of the Plaza, the man now known as “the Russian in the penthouse” has become a lightning rod. On the one hand, many see his complaints as echoing their own, and are sympathetic. One unhappy resident, whose inability to ever see her apartment in advance has left her with what she considers a lemon, says that El-Ad’s behavior has been “diabolical.” “Look what they did to those Russian people.… Why didn’t they just say the penthouse is the [former] servants’ quarters?” The owner of the penthouse next to Vavilov’s, a hedge-fund manager, is suing El-Ad for essentially the same reason.
Was a pattern of concealment emerging? In early November, another lawsuit popped up—this one from the penthouse buyer at another El-Ad building, called the Grand Madison, on Fifth Avenue at Madison Square Park. The case was curiously similar to Vavilov’s, with the buyer claiming that he was led to believe the yet-to-be-built penthouse would have magnificent park views, and that what he got instead was a view of an “ugly and unsafe” eight-foot-eight-inch parapet wall surrounding the terrace. Like Vavilov, he claims he was never allowed to view his apartment, and the parapet did not appear on a floor plan. (El-Ad dismisses the case as “baseless” and copycat, and points out that, even though the buyer might not have been allowed to see the apartment, the parapet was there to begin with and could have been seen from the street.) (-- pgs. 123-126) |
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editor
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| Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 9:52 am Post subject: |
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Vanity Fair
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Profiles in Panic
With Wall Street hemorrhaging jobs and assets, even many of the wealthiest players are retrenching. Others, like the Lehman Brothers bankers who borrowed against their millions in stock, have lost everything. Hedge-fund managers try to sell their luxury homes, while trophy wives are hocking their jewelry. The pain is being felt on St. Barth’s and at Sotheby’s, on benefit-gala committees and at the East Hampton Airport, as the world of the Big Rich collapses, its culture in shock and its values in question.
By Michael Shnayerson
January, 2009
| Quote: | What’s definitely gone—along with Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns—is leverage, at least to the dizzying degree it was recently used by Wall Street’s investment banks, hedge funds, and private-equity firms to parlay each dollar of their assets into $10, $20, even $30 or more of credit to make gargantuan deals and profits. The credit crunch has made such leverage as quaint as the market in Dutch tulips. Without it, Wall Street salaries have already started drifting gently back to earth like so many limp balloons.
Gone, too, are jobs—lots and lots of them. Along with a sizable portion of Lehman’s 26,000 worldwide, and Bear Stearns’s 14,000, Wall Street firms across the board—even Goldman Sachs—are cutting back, and that pain radiates out to the limousine drivers and caterers and lawyers and personal trainers and restaurant owners and real-estate brokers who rely on Wall Street clients, not to mention to the many nonprofits and charities that have grown accustomed to Wall Street money. The latest estimate of jobs New York will lose, both on and off Wall Street, is 160,000. Governor David Paterson says the state’s budget deficit has already reached $12.5 billion. In New York City, where Wall Street accounts for more than a quarter of the tax revenues, Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks the financial-sector crisis will leave a $2 billion hole in the next fiscal year’s budget. ...
There were, to be sure, some big-name “blowups” as the market began to implode. Here was Sumner Redstone, chairman of Viacom and CBS, who had to sell $233 million worth of Viacom and CBS stock in order to pay down part of an $800 million loan. T. Boone Pickens, legendary Texas oilman, was another blowup, and so was Chesapeake Energy’s Aubrey McClendon, forced by a margin call to sell 94 percent of his 32 million company shares into the bear market. (Worth $2.2 billion last July, the shares were sold in October for $569 million.) Kirk Kerkorian, 91, has lost about $12 billion on his 54 percent ownership stake in MGM Mirage, the casino and hotel operator that owns almost half the hotel rooms on the Las Vegas Strip, including those in the Bellagio, the MGM Grand, the Mirage, and Mandalay Bay. The company’s stock is down 86 percent this year, and its bonds were downgraded deeper into junk status in October. Kerkorian has reportedly told friends that he “lived one year too long.” (He now claims he never said it.) Nevertheless, he and the other three men are all still billionaires. ...
These were the stories known because they involved large chunks of publicly traded stock. But as October turned into one of the worst market months since October l929, rumors ran rampant about which high-flying hedge funds would crash as they tried in vain to unwind their investments in derivatives and other unregulated securities, many of them entwined with subprime mortgages. With their lenders forcing them to sell assets at new lows, and their investors trying to pull their money out, the hedge funds were caught in the middle: the gilded age’s biggest winners were now among its biggest losers. Would Ken Griffin’s Citadel be the first big hedge fund to go? Or Fortress—whose clients are trying to redeem $4.5 billion? In fact, the first big tree down following that dreadful month was Tontine Associates, which managed $11 billion through its four hedge funds and whose activist founder, Jeffrey Gendell, had become a billionaire by generating more than 100 percent returns in 2003 and 2005. After two of his funds had lost two-thirds of their value, Gendell bowed to the inevitable and is expected to close them. Days later came word that Steven Rattner was closing his small but high-profile media hedge fund, Quadrangle Equity Investors, after approximately 25 percent year-to-date losses.
Of those 10,000 hedge funds, as many as half may join the casualty list in the next few years. ...
Nowhere is the downturn more dramatic, though, than downtown, where new condominium towers by cutting-edge architects vie for a market that’s almost vanished overnight: young Wall Streeters with bonuses to throw at sleek, overpriced apartments in Richard Meier–knockoff buildings. For the developers, it’s proved a game of high-stakes musical chairs. Those who got their buildings up by early 2007 have sold many of their units by now. Those who started selling after Bear Stearns’s collapse, last March, are struggling, as the Web site StreetEasy confirms. And for those just getting started, good luck.
In the financial district itself, hotel impresario André Balazs embarked on the 47-story William Beaver House in 2006. StreetEasy’s Sofia Kim suggests the name was meant—or at least interpreted—as a naughty wink to hard-partying bachelor traders. With the Tsao & McKown–designed building due to open this month, 209 of its 320 mostly one- and two-bedroom units have sold at top-of-the-market prices—from $900,000 to $6 million. But the rest are either for sale or being held in reserve. That’s a lot of unsold units. ...
Philip K. Howard, a New York lawyer and social critic whose new book is Life Without Lawyers, sees a sea change which was overdue. Every 30 years or so, he notes, the country has to redefine its social values. We’ve just reached the next time. “So this end of the new gilded era—it’s like a bucket that spilled, and finally the money spilled out, and we were left with a culture whose sense of purpose and responsibility were lacking. And now there’s a real need for people, and society as a whole, to rethink and re-structure their values.”
“I may be the only one who’s thrilled by this recession,” says the wife of one London private-equity manager who took his lumps this fall. “It just means we’ll have to get possibly another job. But the bottom line is that it is just money. When you realize that you have enough—your health and a roof and good food and your family—you have to just feel lucky.” (-- pgs. 75-146) |
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| Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 2:25 pm Post subject: |
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Divots
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | "I understand and approve of your horror," said the Oldest Member, gently. "But you must bear in mind that Jenkinson's is not an ordinary case. You know and I know scores of men who have never broken a hundred and twenty in their lives, and yet contrive to be happy, useful members of society. However badly they may play, they are able to forget. But with Jenkinson it is different. He is not one of those who can take it or leave it alone. His only chance of happiness lies in complete abstinence. Jenkinson is a goof."
"A what?"
"A goof," repeated the Sage. "One of those unfortunate beings who have allowed this noblest of sports to get too great a grip upon them, who have permitted it to eat into their souls, like some malignant growth. The goof, you must understand, is not like you and me. He broods. He becomes morbid. His goofery unfits him for the battles of life. Jenkinson, for example, was once a man with a glowing future in the hay, corn, and feed business, but a constant stream of hooks, tops and slices gradually made him so diffident and mistrustful of himself, that he let opportunity after opportunity slip, with the result that other, sterner, hay, corn, and feed merchants passed him in the race. Every time he had the chance to carry through some big deal in hay, or to execute some flashing coup in corn and feed, the fatal diffidence generated by a hundred rotten rounds would undo him. I understand his bankruptcy may be expected at any moment." (From The Heart of a Goof, pgs. 16-17) |
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