The Downward Nanny
Yoga Faces Regulation, and Firmly Pushes Back
Ruby Washington/The New York Times
Alison West, head of a yoga teachers’ coalition in New York.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Ten years ago, with yoga transforming into a ubiquitous pop culture phenomenon from a niche pursuit, yoga teachers banded together to create a voluntary online registry of schools meeting new standards for training instructors.
But that list — which now includes nearly 1,000 yoga schools nationwide, many of them tiny — is being put to a use for which it was never intended. It is the key document in a crackdown that pits free-spirited yogis against lumbering state governments, which, unlike those they are trying to regulate, are not always known for their flexibility.
Citing laws that govern vocational schools, like those for hairdressers and truck drivers, regulators have begun to require licenses for yoga schools that train instructors, with all the fees, inspections and paperwork that entails. While confrontations have played out differently in different states, threats of shutdowns and fines have, in some cases, been met with accusations of power grabs and religious infringement — disputes that seem far removed from the meditative world yoga calls to mind.
In April, New York State sent letters to about 80 schools warning them to suspend teacher training programs immediately or risk fines of up to $50,000. But yogis around the state joined in opposition, and the state has, for now, backed down.
In other states, regulators were not moved. In March, Michigan gave schools a week to be certified by the state or cease operations. Virginia’s cumbersome licensing rules include a $2,500 fee — a big hit for modest studios that are often little more than one-room storefronts.
Lisa Rapp, who owns My Yoga Spirit in Norfolk, Va., said she was closing her seven-year-old business this summer. “This caused us to shut down the studio altogether,” Ms. Rapp said. “It’s too bad, because this community really needs yoga.”
Construction Worker On A Chain Rescues Woman From Drowning
Five Feet Of Compost
from Google News via AP via The New York Post
Wallet stolen in 1982 found in NYC tree; $20 gone
NEW YORK (AP) — Money doesn’t grow on trees, but a tree-care supervisor in New York City’s Central Park found an old wallet inside a dead one.
The blue leather wallet had been stolen by a pickpocket 27 years ago. It was found in the hollow of a dying cherry tree. It was near where Ruth Bendik had hers swiped while she watched the New York City Marathon in 1982.
The 69-year-old Upper East Side resident says the only thing missing was $20 in cash. Her credit cards were still there. So were her student ID from Columbia University Teachers College and an employee ID from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
The park worker says he found the wallet last week under five feet of compost. Police tracked down Bendik the next day.
Reggie Fleming Gone
Ex-Blackhawk Reggie Fleming dead at 73
July 11, 2009 2:00 PM
Reggie Fleming, a member of the Chicago Blackhawks 1961 Stanley Cup champions, passed away this morning at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, his son Chris said today. He was 73.
Check back for more details.
Fleming’s biography on Wikipedia and on Legends of Hockey; Fleming’s career stats
Soul Power ’74 Out Of Africa At Last
Zaire’s Moment of the Soul
Antidote Films/Sony Pictures
The Zaire ’74 music festival included African musicians like Miriam Makeba, center, as well as top American soul acts like the Spinners, left, and and James Brown, right. The festival is the subject of the film “Soul Power.”
LEFTOVERS can be tasty.
Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, the director of the new documentary “Soul Power,” was a film editor in 1995 for “When We Were Kings,” the Oscar-winning documentary directed by Leon Gast about the Rumble in the Jungle, the 1974 heavyweight world championship bout between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Kinshasa, the capital of Zaire (now Congo).
That fight had a huge sideshow: Zaire ’74, a three-day music festival of American soul alongside African music, headlined by James Brown and filmed by the same crew that was in Zaire for the fight. “Soul Power” presents that festival from its precarious beginnings to the finale of a shirtless, sweating James Brown singing to an African audience, “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud.”
The festival was a striking sociocultural moment. African-American and Latin musicians were being introduced to Africa and African musicians amid Mr. Ali’s black-power politics and a hodgepodge of visiting music, sports and literary figures. “There was a lot of deeper meaning about why people went there and what it evoked for them,” Mr. Levy-Hinte said.
Hemingway Exposed As Failure
Hemingway revealed as failed KGB spy
Notes from Stalin-era intelligence archives show ‘agent Argo’ as a willing recruit in 1941
Useful in battle? Ernest Hemingway in 1944. Photograph: George Karger/Time Life Pictures
Up till now, this has been a notably cheerful year for admirers of Ernest Hemingway – a surprisingly diverse set of people who range from Michael Palin to Elmore Leonard. Almost every month has brought good news: a planned Hemingway biopic; a new, improved version of his memoir, A Moveable Feast; the opening of a digital archive of papers found in his Cuban home; progress on a movie of Islands in the Stream.
Last week, however, saw the publication of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press), which reveals the Nobel prize-winning novelist was for a while on the KGB’s list of its agents in America. Co-written by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, the book is based on notes that Vassiliev, a former KGB officer, made when he was given access in the 90s to Stalin-era intelligence archives in Moscow.
Its section on the author’s secret life as a “dilettante spy” draws on his KGB file in saying he was recruited in 1941 before making a trip to China, given the cover name “Argo”, and “repeatedly expressed his desire and willingness to help us” when he met Soviet agents in Havana and London in the 40s. However, he failed to “give us any political information” and was never “verified in practical work”, so contacts with Argo had ceased by the end of the decade. Was he only ever a pseudo-spook, possibly seeing his clandestine dealings as potential literary material, or a genuine but hopelessly ineffective one?
The latter reading would chime with his attempts to assist the US during the second world war in his fishing boat El Pilar, patrolling waters north of Cuba in search of U-Boats, making coded notes but only one sighting.
Tortoise @ Amoeba
From Crack Houses To Evil Aliens
from The Guardian’s Books Blog
James Frey targets a million little readers
Controversial writer James Frey has been outed as the co-author of a hot new children’s book, as yet unpublished. But why all the mystery?
From crack houses to evil aliens … James Frey. Photograph: Ulf Andersen/Getty
Not content with penning the third book of the Bible, James Frey, who wrote of his struggle with drug addiction in a controversial memoir, is turning to children’s books.
As ever with Frey, who was found to have fabricated parts of his autobiography, A Million Little Pieces, there are layers within layers to this latest book deal. Last week it emerged in the New York Times that a young adult novel was being hawked to publishers as a collaboration between a bestselling writer and an emerging new author. The book, called I Am Number Four, is about a group of alien teenagers who take refuge on Earth when their planet is attacked.
The New York Times outed Frey as the author, and yesterday reported that HarperCollins Children’s Books had acquired North American rightsin the first four books in what is being billed as a series, starting with I Am Number Four.
Film rights have also been acquired by Dreamworks for a high six-figure sum, added the Hollywood Reporter, with Michael Bay (director of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) lined up to produce and possibly direct.
As yet Frey himself has not commented on the deal, telling website Gawker – where he interned for a day – that he could “neither confirm nor deny that I had anything to do with that book”. However, he has posted a link to the New York Times piece revealing him as the author on his official website, also linking to a story revealing more of the plot details. The evil aliens are from the planet Mogadore, who destroyed the planet Lorien in order to take its natural resources; they follow the planet’s teenagers, who develop special powers aged 15, to Earth to complete the job.
Dominant Fantasy of Every American Boy Born Between 1965 and 1974 May Have Come True – Oprah Considering Show
‘Marcia Brady’ Says Television Sister ‘Jan’ Won’t Talk to Her Over ‘Lesbian Love Affair’
Maureen McCormick, who played Marcia on “The Brady Bunch,” claims Eve Plumb, who played her sister Jan, is upset because McCormick claimed they had a lesbian affair on the set of the ’70s sitcom.
McCormick, blogging this week on Fancast.com, said all six Brady “kids” were invited to re unite on the Oprah Winfrey show in September: “All of us said yes except for one person, Eve Plumb, who used to be my best friend but now apparently wants to distance herself from the show and, most troubling, from me … I have no idea why, unless she’s mad at the joke I made a few years ago that we’d had a lesbian love affair. I made the crack to be funny — and for shock value. I’m sorry if she took offense.”
McCormick “joked” about their sapphic sex last year just before her autobiography, “Here’s the Story,” was published. The “joke” made the book a best seller.
Plumb’s agent, Mark Measures, downplayed any animosity: “No one from ‘Oprah’ called. We haven’t turned down anything. There is no feud.”
First Banana Republic, Now Smith & Hawken – Why Mill Valley Companies Should Never Sell Out
from the San Francisco Chronicle
After 30 years, Smith & Hawken to close
Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera, Chronicle Staff Writer
(07-09) 15:18 PDT NOVATO — Nearly 30 years after the first Smith & Hawken store opened in Mill Valley, the gardening retail chain is being closed by parent company Scotts Miracle-Gro Co., which said it will drop the brand by the end of this year.
Smith & Hawken, founded by Dave Smith and Paul Hawken in 1979, began its final sale Thursday by slashing prices by 20 to 30 percent. Its Web site already has stopped accepting orders, hanging out a virtual chalkboard sign reading, “Thank you for 30 wonderful years in the garden.”
The move will leave 700 employees nationwide, including those at its Novato headquarters, without a job. Scotts Miracle-Gro said in a statement that it will pay about $25 million in lease terminations and severance payments.
Scotts Miracle-Gro, in Marysville, Ohio, had been losing money on Smith & Hawken since it bought the company in 2004. Its initial plan was to turn the brand into an outdoor living and gardening product line it could move through wholesale distribution channels like Home Depot and Lowe’s, said company spokesman Jim King.
“That proved to be a strategy we could not execute. It left us with a specialty retailer and that’s not who we are. We never meant to keep it as a stand-alone retail operation,” he said.
Augustus Gloop Really Happens
from the San Jose Mercury News
Man dies after falling into vat of chocolate in New Jersey
CAMDEN, N.J. — Authorities say a man died after falling into a vat of melted chocolate in a New Jersey processing plant.
A spokesman for the Camden County prosecutor’s office says the 29-year-old temporary worker at the Cocoa Services Inc. plant fell after a blade used to mix raw chocolate hit him. His name has not been released.
The accident happened Wednesday morning as the worker was loading chocolate into the vat where it’s melted and mixed before being shipped elsewhere to be made into candy.
Combat Recession By Making Your Own Salt
Roller skate gang / Stealing the show, the people watching
MARK GONZALEZ @ Half Gallery
Half Gallery Makes its Mark
Mark Gonzales opens South West on July 9th at Half Gallery, a new space in the Lower East Side’s burgeoning gallery district.
The gallery opened its doors this past April and is a partnership between James Frey, Bill Powers, and Andy Spade. All three are no strangers to artistic endeavors. A limited edition release of Frey’s lastest novel featured art by Richard Prince and Terry Richardson (Frey is also the author of the widely debated book A Million Little Pieces). Powers sits on the board of RxArt, a non-profit that facilitates the creation of well known artists in children’s hospitals, while Spade is the man behind the successful men’s accessories brand Jack Spade and new downtown NY concept shop, Partners and Spade.
Gonzales last exhibited in NY in a collaborative show with Christian Hosoi at the Journal Gallery, which ran through December, 2006.
Half Gallery co-founders: James Frey, Bill Powers and Andy Spade. Image: Derin Thorpe/PaperMag
Mark Gonzales – South West, curated by Emma Reeves
July 10 – August 2
Opening Reception: July 9, 6-8pm
Half Gallery
208 Forsyth St.NY, NY 10002
Study Proves Monkeys Pay Attention in the 7th Grade
Monkeys have a memory for grammar
- 00:01 08 July 2009 by Catherine Brahic
- For similar stories, visit the The Human Brain Topic Guide
Primates can intuitively recognise some rules of grammar, according to a study of cotton-topped tamarin monkeys (Saguinus oedipus).
The findings do not mean primates can communicate using language, but they do suggest that some of the skills required to use language may be linked to very basic memory functions.
One grammatical structure that is found across many languages is affixation: the addition of syllables, either at the beginning or at the end of a word, to modify its meaning.
For instance, in English, the suffix “–ed” is added to verbs to make the past tense. In German, the same effect is achieved by adding the prefix “ge–” to the front of verb stems.
Ansgar Endress and colleagues at Harvard University thought that, because this structure is found in so many languages, it might be linked to basic memory functions that are independent of language. If they could prove this was true, it would suggest ways that children might be learning grammatical structures.
“We were just having a little fun, Officer. Never mind.”
Men shoot each other at gas station
Police say two men shot each other after an argument at a Phoenix gas station Tuesday afternoon.
Both men refused to cooperate with the investigation after they shot each other in the leg during a fight at a gas station near Indian School Road and North 67th Avenue, said Phoenix Police Det. James Holmes.
Police don’t know what the argument was about. Holmes said both men could face weapon charges.
Don’t Copy That Floppy
Thou Shalt Not Deaccession
OCMA’s quiet sale of 18 paintings raises hackles
Laguna Art Museum
“Spring in the Canyon” by William Wendt is one of 18 sold by OCMA to a private collector.
The sale of the California Impressionist paintings to a private collector is seen as a snub to some in art circles.
The Orange County Museum of Art was tooling along, a sporty little contender in the contemporary art world, its reputation sparkling from the good reviews its exhibitions consistently have earned in Southern California and across the nation.
And then, suddenly, it got splashed with grime. At least that’s how some critics see it, although museum director Dennis Szakacs insists there was nothing blameworthy in OCMA’s sale of 18 California Impressionist paintings from the early 1900s. A private collector, whose name the museum won’t divulge, bought the pieces in March for $963,000, a price many experts think was about half what the museum should have gotten.
The transaction, approved unanimously by OCMA’s board, has put the Newport Beach museum in the cross hairs of one of the art world’s many controversies over “deaccessioning,” the term for when a museum sells art from its collection.
“Anyone who does not own Thriller, Bad or Dangerous – leave now.”
Two of The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse
James Frey/Michael Bay Partnership Coming Ever Closer to Fruition
7/2/09 at 3:45 PM
Comment
Photo: Getty Images
There was only one pesky thing getting in the way of the proposed partnership between Michael Bay and James Frey. And no, it wasn’t a piece of legislation outlawing two of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse from working on a project together (although we hear there is growing support for just such a bill on the Hill). Rather, it was the fact that a publisher had yet to acquire the rights to the proposed series. Well, consider that hurdle, um, hurdled: The North American rights have been sold to HarperCollins Children’s Books for an undisclosed sum. [NYT]
Respect
“A rich and imaginative world filled with action-packed suspense that will captivate teen readers.”
James Frey to pen teen series with Jobie Hughes
Jul 2, 2009, 01:40 PM | by Kate Ward
HarperCollins announced today that it will publish four teen-centric books by A Million Little Pieces author James Frey and debut novelist Jobie Hughes. The first book will be titled I Am Number Four, and will focus on a group of alien teens who travel to Earth after their home planet is destroyed. “The authors have created a rich and imaginative world filled with action-packed suspense that will captivate teen readers,” HarperCollins Children’s Books President & Publisher Susan Katz said in a release from the publisher.
Chicken strudel with fresh tomato compote
Ninja Puss
HarperCollins Buys Four
HarperCollins Buys Series from James Frey
By MOTOKO RICHA week after submitting a young adult novel anonymously to editors, James Frey, the notorious author of “A Million Little Pieces,” and a writing partner, Jobie Hughes, have agreed to sell North American rights to “I Am Number Four” and three subsequent books in a planned series to HarperCollins, Mr. Frey’s most recent publisher of his adult novel, “Bright Shiny Morning.” Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Karl Malden Gone
Breaking News from ABCNEWS.com:
Actor Karl Malden Has Died at Age 97, According to His Family [3:30 p.m. ET]
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Never Has A Tennis Racket Hurt So Much
Honey, My Love, Darling, Sweetheart, Pumpkin
An elderly gent was invited to an old friends home for dinner one evening. He was impressed by the way his buddy preceded every request to his wife with endearing terms such as: Honey, My Love, Darling, Sweetheart, Pumpkin, etc. The couple had been married almost 70 years and, clearly, they were still very much in love.
While the wife was in the kitchen, the man leaned over to his host, ‘I think it’s wonderful that, after all these years, you still call your wife those loving pet names’.
The old man hung his head. ‘I have to tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘Her name slipped my mind about 10 years ago, and I’m scared to death to ask the cranky old bitch what her name is.’
Outside a Biker Bar in Florida
Number Four Plot Details
Plot Details Surface on James Frey’s I Am Number Four
It was recently announced that Michael Bay would be producing and possibly directing an adaptation of the upcoming novel, I Am Number Four, and now we have some more details on that film. Our friends over at FilmDrunk has dug up a new synopsis for the film, which you can read below.
The protagonist is 15. The rival race of aliens are from the planet Mogadore. They destroyed Lorien in order to strip the planet of its natural resources because Mogadore was dying, and still is, and they followed the Loric to Earth to finish the job. The Loric develop their “Legacies” (special powers) around their fifteenth year. This first book is a kind of love story. At its core it’s a type of father/son alone in the world, always moving to stay alive story, a lá The Road.