Louis Harris, Pollster at Forefront of American Trends, Dies at 95

Abstract: Louis Harris, the nation’s best-known 20th-century pollster, who refined interpretive polling methods and took the pulse of voters and consumers through four decades of elections, wars, racial troubles and cultural revolutions that ran from tail fins to the internet, died on Saturday at his home in Key West, Fla. He was 95. His death was confirmed by a grandson, Zachary Louis Harris. From the 1950s, when he founded Louis Harris & Associates, until he retired in the early 1990s, Mr. Harris with remarkable accuracy forecast the elections of presidents, governors, members of Congress and scores of other public officials. Along the way, he used polls to sharpen their images, change their speech patterns and focus their attention on issues of interest to voters. He told companies how to market products and services, and conducted polls for industry groups, religious organizations, colleges, unions, banks and government agencies. He also documented trends in American life, from the women’s movement and the ups and downs of the economy to evolving attitudes about marriage, religion, the arts and countless other matters. He preferred to be called a public-opinion analyst rather than a pollster, a word that he believed trivialized what he did, which went beyond gathering data into new realms of interpretation — useful to clients of his consulting firm and more meaningful to millions who watched his analyses on the CBS and ABC television networks or who read his nationally syndicated newspaper and magazine columns. His results were sometimes wrong. And critics questioned his early practice of using his polls to promote candidates — notably John F. Kennedy in his 1960 presidential race — for whom he worked as a campaign strategist. But he gave up political advocacy after a few years to concentrate on public polling and analyses for the newspaper and television jobs that made him a household name in America. In the 1960s, he developed television’s ability to project national election winners on the basis of early returns after polls closed in the East. But critics said projections before the polls closed in the West discouraged some voters from casting ballots, and the networks voluntarily ended the practice. Mr. Harris denied that his work affected the outcome of elections or corrupted voting processes. He rejected charges that he was too commercial, although he made a fortune in market research. And he scoffed at accusations that his polls reflected a liberal Democratic bias; he said he often worked for Republicans and was guided by principles of fairness and accuracy. Like Elmo Roper and George Gallup, his pioneering predecessors, Mr. Harris plumbed attitudes with face-to-face interviews, using carefully worded questions put by trained interviewers to subjects selected as part of a group that was chosen as demographically representative of the nation. (Telephone interviews, faster and less expensive, came into wide use in the late 1970s, and proved to be just as valid.) But the Harris methods were more sophisticated than those of Mr. Roper, a Depression- and World War II-era researcher, who first developed scientific polling techniques, and who was a mentor to Mr. Harris early in his career. Mr. Harris phrased questions to better understand what people really thought. He did not seek simple “yes” or “no” answers; his criteria for picking representative subjects were more precise, and his analyses of data were more meaningful. And unlike Dr. Gallup, who refused to conduct private polls for politicians, Mr. Harris embraced political advocacy early in his career. In 1956, after nearly a decade as a protégé and partner of Mr. Roper, he founded Louis Harris & Associates. The bulk of the company’s early work was market research for concerns like Johnson & Johnson, American Airlines, Standard Oil and the New York Stock Exchange. But his work drew the attention of the syndicated columnists Joseph and Stewart Alsop, and an avalanche of political work ensued. Over seven years, Mr. Harris worked for Democratic and Republican candidates in 214 campaigns in all 50 states, including 45 of 100 United States senators and half the nation’s governors. Image Louis Harris addressing the National Press Club about the 1968 presidential election between Richard M. Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. Credit Charles Harrity/Associated Press His most prominent client was John Kennedy, who hired him in 1958 to help his Senate re-election campaign. A year later, Mr. Harris helped persuade him to run for president, and became a key strategist, advising him to discuss his Roman Catholicism openly and take a stand on civil rights. Preparing for debates with Richard M. Nixon, Mr. Harris urged the youthful-looking Kennedy to give three-part answers to every question to promote an image of maturity, and advised him to slow his rapid speech to project a warmer personality. He fit in nicely with the Kennedy crowd: A ruggedly handsome, athletic man with a square jaw and a high forehead, he shared the clan’s fascination with politics and its comfortable blend of intelligence, wit and charm. He and Kennedy had both been in the wartime Navy, loved to swim and were at home on a beach or a sailboat, and they were both good at winning the trust of strangers. Mr. Harris also worked on campaigns for Mayor Robert F. Wagner of New York, Senator Frank Church of Idaho, Senators John Sherman Cooper and Thruston B. Morton of Kentucky and many others. In 1962, he helped Gov. Edmund G. Brown defeat Nixon in the California governor’s race. By 1963, however, Mr. Harris had given up political advocacy to become a syndicated columnist and a public-opinion analyst for CBS News. Besides polling and appearing on the air, he developed Voter Profile Analysis, a model of national and state voting patterns by ethnic, religious and economic blocs that he used to predict election results with astonishing success, starting in 1964. From 1963 to 1968, Mr. Harris wrote syndicated columns for The Washington Post and Newsweek, and from 1969 to 1988 he wrote for The Chicago Tribune-New York Daily News Syndicate. His columns appeared in more than 100 newspapers. He wrote for Time magazine from 1969 to 1972. He later shifted his TV commentaries to ABC News. Harris polls often made news. One in 1974 found that the Republicans could not hold the White House unless Nixon resigned in the Watergate scandal. In 1980 he foretold Ronald Reagan’s election as president, and in 1990 he found that President George Bush might not be re-elected. (He lost to Bill Clinton in 1992.) Harris surveys on the attitudes of black and white people became landmarks in race relations. His books, on politics, racial issues and national trends, included “Is There a Republican Majority?” (1954), “The Negro Revolution in America” (1964, with William Brink), “Black and White” (1967), “Black-Jewish Relations in New York City: The Anguish of Change” (1973) and “Inside America” (1987). Louis Harris & Associates was sold to the investment firm Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette in 1969, and again to Gannett in 1975. Despite the ownership changes, Mr. Harris continued as chief executive until he retired in 1992. In 1996, a merger of Louis Harris & Associates and the Gordon S. Black Corporation produced Harris Interactive, a global market research company based in Rochester and New York City. Humphrey Taylor, chairman of Harris Interactive’s Harris Poll, who was Mr. Harris’s deputy for years and his successor at Louis Harris & Associates, called Mr. Harris “a true original, who pushed the envelope beyond any of his predecessors in the design and use of surveys.” Mr. Harris was born on Jan. 6, 1921, in New Haven, one of three children of Harry Harris, a real estate developer, and the former Frances Smith. He became interested in politics and journalism in high school, and after graduating in 1938 attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After earning a degree in economics in 1942, he joined the Navy and became a junior officer on patrol boats in the North Atlantic. In 1943, he married Florence Yard. She died in 2004. He is survived by their children, Peter, Richard and Susan Yard Harris, and four grandchildren. Mr. Harris ran his first poll in 1945. Stationed at Boston, he was asked by the Navy to determine if sailors there were being treated properly. He found that morale was low, and that sailors felt neglected by the Navy and exploited by the local citizenry. After a year as a researcher with a veterans’ organization, Mr. Harris went to work for Mr. Roper in 1947. He wrote his boss’s newspaper columns and radio scripts until 1951, when he became a partner, concentrating on political research. He left Roper five years later to form his own polling organization. In a 2009 interview, Mr. Harris defended his efforts to influence political decisions. “The key is — and this I feel more deeply than anything else,” he said, “If you know what people are trying to say, and it’s something that may save the country if the people running it know about it, can do something about it, then you have a deep obligation, a moral obligation, to take what they have said, and get to know the people that can do something about it.”


South Korea Suspends Asiana Flights Between Incheon and San Francisco

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s transport ministry decided on Friday to suspend Asiana Airlines’ flights between Incheon, South Korea, and San Francisco for 45 days as a penalty for the crash of one of its jets in the United States last year. Asiana Flight 214 struck a sea wall short of the runway at San Francisco International Airport in July 2013. Three passengers were killed and more than 180 injured in the crash, the first fatal airliner disaster in the United States in more than four years. Asiana, based in Seoul, South Korea, flies the Incheon-San Francisco route once a day with the 295-seat Boeing 777. The penalty announced on Friday will take effect within six months unless Asiana appeals the decision, the ministry said in statement. There was no immediate reaction from the airliner. In June, the National Transportation Safety Board blamed pilot error for the crash, insufficient training and confusion about the plane’s automated controls. After the accident, both Asiana and the South Korean government said they were strengthening pilot training and safety standards.

Asiana Airlines
Plane Crash
South Korea
San Francisco International Airport
Airlines,airplanes


Griner’s Record Day Leads Baylor

Abstract: Brittney Griner had 31 points, 8 rebounds and 7 blocks as No. 3 Baylor beat No. 8 Texas A&M , 61-58, to capture the Big 12 tournament title in Kansas City, Mo. Griner’s points and blocks were Big 12 championship game records. The Lady Bears (31-2) celebrated their second Big 12 championship in three years because of the domination by Griner at both ends. During one stretch, she scored 20 consecutive points. The Aggies’ Danielle Adams, the conference leading scorer at 23 points a game, was held to 12 points and 4-of-19 shooting. Tyra White scored 12 points and had 9 rebounds for the Aggies (27-5). Baylor used a 23-6 run to move ahead, 23-18, with 5 minutes 22 seconds left in the half. Griner finished the first half with 16 points, shooting 5 for 9 after a 1-for-5 start. STANFORD TOPS PAC-10 Toni Kokenis, a freshman, scored 10 of her career-high 17 points in the final 5:17 to rally No. 2 Stanford past No. 7 U.C.L.A., 64-55, in Los Angeles. It was Stanford’s sixth straight Pacific-10 tournament championship. The top-seeded Cardinal (29-2) won its 57th consecutive game against a league opponent. Nnemkadi Ogwumike added 15 points for the Cardinal. Doreena Campbell scored 16 points for U.C.L.A. (27-4). MID-AMERICAN CHAMPION Lauren Prochaska scored 20 points as Bowling Green overcame a miserable shooting performance to win another Mid-American Conference title, 51-46 over Eastern Michigan (22-12) in Cleveland. The second-seeded Falcons (28-4) won their second straight MAC title and will receive the league’s automatic N.C.A.A. bid. U.C. DAVIS WINS BIG WEST Paige Mintun scored 20 points as U. C. Davis (24-8) held off Cal Poly (18-12) for a 66-49 victory in the Big West tournament final in Anaheim, Calif., to earn a trip to the N.C.A.A. tournament. FRESNO STATE TAKES WAC Jaleesa Ross scored 17 of her 23 points in the second half, helping Fresno State (25-7) beat Louisiana Tech (24-7) in Las Vegas, 78-76, to win the Western Athletic Conference championship and reach the N.C.A.A. tournament for the fifth straight year. NAVY EARNS FIRST N.C.A.A. TRIP Jade Geif had 16 points and 10 rebounds and host Navy (20-11) rallied to a 47-40 win over American (22-9) in the final of the Patriot League tournament. IN OTHER GAMES Robin Jones made a go-ahead jumper from the foul line with 33.3 seconds left, and Prairie View A&M (21-11) gained a 48-44 win over Southern (20-11) for the Southwestern Athletic Conference title in Garland, Tex., and a berth in the N.C.A.A. tournament. ... The freshman Michelle Plouffe hit a key basket in the closing minutes of regulation and then scored 8 of her 24 points in overtime in a 52-47 win for Utah (18-16) over Texas Christian (22-10) in the final of the Mountain West Conference tournament in Las Vegas.

College Athletics
Basketball
Baylor University
Texas A&M University
Basketball (College)
Griner Brittney


Wrestling With a Soccer Dream

Abstract: WASHINGTON — I am an idealist, perfectionist, dreamer and believer. The older I get, the more I realize this about myself. Maybe because age and experience usually jade people and it surprises me how little I have changed. This became most clear to me because I can never sleep on a plane ride home. I’m too wound up. On the return leg of each adventure my career has afforded me, my mind works nearly as fast as the jet that propels me through the air. I feel sentimental because often I am leaving a part of the world and people I may never see again. But I am energized by these beginnings that others may see as ends. As I returned from playing in Cyprus, I felt sad to separate from an amazing place and group of people. I was also disappointed that we could not be the first women’s team from Cyprus to advance past the Round of 32 in the UEFA Women’s Champions League . As this chapter ended, I couldn’t help but reflect on my career. If you had told me as a teenager that at 27 I would be playing soccer for a team in Cyprus, I would have been steadfast in assuring you that is not the dream I imagined. But that’s the thing about dreams. I have deeply misunderstood them and their place in my life. Dreams can provide addictive feelings — a pounding heart, trembling hands, racing mind, and then, a still heart. But I have been guilty of letting dreams dictate how I feel about my life. What I am learning to do instead is to let my life lead me to my dreams. While in Cyprus, I walked out into a beautiful stadium while the Champions League anthem played; I swam in the Mediterranean Sea; I met people who inspired me to stay up all night talking; I had moved to a place to play the sport I love and get paid to do it. Whatever energizes my spirit and brings joy and fulfillment is, in fact, a dream come true. Dreams are simply visions representing a way we hope to feel. I have often hung onto those specific visions as representations of success or failure. What I’ve found is that fulfillment comes in seeking the feeling, not necessarily the vision. I lived my life seeking to replicate the specific visions of my dreams, and in doing so, made my dreams my master. I sat in the stands and watched my friends represent the U.S. women’s national team in Concacaf qualifiers. The vision I had associated with my dreams would have left me feeling like a failure because in my dreams, I see myself out there, wearing the U.S. jersey. I can separate that vision now. I am living my dream, even if it is not exactly how I had pictured it. I am healthy, still improving as a player, employed to train and play, and in a position to interact with and empower young players around the world. It is not just wearing that U.S. jersey that is my dream. My dreams are not my master. That doesn’t mean that I won’t pursue lofty goals with every ounce of my being. It doesn’t mean I have forfeited in my constant tug-of-war between contentment and desire. I’m addicted to finding that next opportunity to feel my dreams come to life within my heart. I don’t know what they will look like. That is not always up to me to decide. But I know what they will feel like. As my flight from Cyprus landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport, the captain came on the intercom. Instead of the typical spiel to enjoy our time in New York or whatever our final destination may be, he wished us a “happy onward journey.” I smiled. His sentiments were fitting. Dream on, my friends, and happy onward journey. Yael Averbuch, a native of Montclair, N.J., played last season for the Washington Spirit of the National Women’s Soccer League and most recently for Apollon F.C. in Cyprus. You can follow her at yaelaverbuch.com.

United States Women's National Soccer Team


$9 Million to Settle Case for 2 Wrongly Convicted

Abstract: Two men who spent 16 years in prison before their convictions in a 1989 double murder in Manhattan were overturned have agreed to accept $9 million to settle their lawsuits against New York City, the state and the city Housing Authority. The agreement, announced on Thursday by a lawyer for the men, is the culmination of a legal ordeal that stretched decades and cast a spotlight on prosecutors’ tactics during an extraordinarily violent period in the city. It also represents the latest in a series of settlements involving people who were found to be wrongly convicted based on flawed prosecutions. In June the city agreed to pay $40 million to resolve a bitterly fought civil rights lawsuit over the arrests and imprisonment of five men in the 1989 beating and rape of a female jogger in Central Park. Those convictions were later overturned. It was during that same year that a drive-by shooting on the Lower East Side left two men dead and injured two others. Danny Colon, 50, and Anthony Ortiz, 44, were arrested in the fall of 1990 and charged with the murders. The convictions rested heavily on the testimony of two witnesses, including Anibal Vera, a childhood friend of Mr. Colon’s. Mr. Vera testified that Mr. Colon had admitted to the killing and said Mr. Ortiz had helped him. But Mr. Vera also acknowledged at trial that his cooperation with prosecutors followed a 1990 arrest in which he was charged with drug possession. Mr. Vera maintained that the prosecutor in the case, Margaret J. Finerty, only helped him with that arrest; he denied that she had anything to do with the lenient sentence he received for a subsequent felony drug charge, according to court records. In her closing statement, Ms. Finerty told jurors she gave Mr. Vera no other help. In 2009, New York State’s highest court found that the accounts of both the witness and the prosecutor were untrue. Ms. Finerty, for example, helped relocate Mr. Vera’s grandmother, according to the Court of Appeals decision that overturned the conviction. The court found that the Manhattan prosecutor had misled the jury and improperly withheld information from defense lawyers at the trial. Over the past year, public attention has been focused on a number of wrongful convictions in Brooklyn, many tied to Detective Louis Scarcella, a prominent homicide detective during the height of the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s. Last spring, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office announced that it would reopen and review every guilty conviction in which Mr. Scarcella was the lead investigator. Joel B. Rudin, a lawyer for Mr. Colon and Mr. Ortiz, said he expected settlement papers to be filed later this month. “This case demonstrates that the illegal tactics used by New York City detectives and prosecutors to bring about so many wrongful convictions during the ‘drug wars’ of the late 1980s and 1990s were not limited to Brooklyn,” Mr. Rudin said. “The same tactics were used in Manhattan.” He said that the Manhattan district attorney’s office should follow the lead of the Brooklyn district attorney, Kenneth P. Thompson, who is systematically reinvestigating dozens of questionable convictions from that era. The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment. Mr. Colon, 50, is employed as an electrician. Mr. Ortiz, 44, works as a personal trainer. “I am scarred by losing so many years of my life,” Mr. Ortiz said in a statement.

False arrest
Murders
NYC
Danny Colon
Anthony Ortiz
Lower East Side Manhattan


One Out Away, Red Sox Lose to Cap September Meltdown

Abstract: BALTIMORE — There has been great cruelty and suffering for the Boston Red Sox and their famed nation across the decades. But seldom has a bizarre set of circumstances ever occurred that left them with the sick and sinking feeling they had shortly after the clock struck midnight Wednesday night at Camden Yards. Taking a one-run lead into the ninth inning against the Baltimore Orioles , one out away from a 3-2 victory and an extension of their season, closer Jonathan Papelbon surrendered three straight hits as the Red Sox dropped a 4-3 decision to put their postseason fate into the hands of the Yankees in St. Petersburg , Fla. Moments later, Evan Longoria homered to give the Tampa Bay Rays an 8-7 victory in 12 innings and the American League wild-card berth, finishing off a historic collapse by the Red Sox, who led the Rays by nine games on Sept. 4. If anything, the final night of the regular season turned out to be a microcosm of the month for the Red Sox and the Rays. The ending was especially stunning as Carl Crawford — the Red Sox’ $142 million free-agent left fielder taken from the Rays — failed to catch a sinking liner off the bat of Robert Andino, sending Nolan Reimold home with the winning run. “I knew I couldn’t dive for it, had to get under it,” Crawford said. “I think the ball tipped my glove. I don’t think I’ve ever been part of something like this. It will go down as one of the worst collapses in history.” Having lost 20 of 27 September games, the Red Sox will suffer a long, cold winter mulling over countless what-ifs. “We had 161 other games besides this one to get into the playoffs,” said the second baseman Dustin Pedroia, whose home run had given the Red Sox their 3-2 lead in the fifth. “We didn’t. It’s our fault. It wasn’t just this game.” But from this excruciating game, the Red Sox will remember being unable to push across an insurance run or two against the Baltimore bullpen in the eighth and ninth innings Wednesday night. In the eighth, shortstop Marco Scutaro turned to see if a drive into left-center field by Crawford would be caught and his hesitation led to him being thrown out at the plate. In the ninth, the Red Sox failed to score after putting men on first and third with none out. “We wanted so desperately to win,” said Red Sox Manager Terry Francona, whose two-year option on his expiring contract has not been picked up yet by the Red Sox. “We just couldn’t hold on.” Their night began so promisingly, the good news from the west coast of Florida flashing in their faces on the scoreboard in right field. The Yankees took a 5-0 lead over the Rays when Mark Teixeira hit a grand slam in the second inning. The Boston fans in the crowd let out a roar that might have cracked a few warehouse windows. The Rays, later falling behind by 7-0, had to be on the way down, and if they were, all the Red Sox had to do was defeat the Orioles, the annoying but lowly, last-place Orioles, and they would be home free, on the postseason road. “We got a lot of destinations possible tonight,” Francona had said before the game. “We’ll be happy to go anywhere but Boston.” But this wildest of wild-card nights would include a 1-hour 26-minute seventh-inning rain delay during which the Red Sox watched the Rays rally for 6 runs in the eighth on the multiple television screens hanging in their clubhouse. When the rain stopped and the tarp was removed, they reappeared in their dugout just in time to see that Mariano Rivera was not on to close for the Yankees and to witness Dan Johnson’s pinch-hit home run with two outs that sent the game into extra innings. Has there ever been a more unusual night in the history of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry without them setting foot on the same field? All the Red Sox had wanted was a chance to play on, even if it had to be a 163rd game against the Rays in St. Petersburg. To that end, Boston’s executive vice president and general manager, Theo Epstein, was said to be exploring the possibility of claiming a starting pitcher off waivers — Fox Sports reported them considering the Kansas City left-hander Bruce Chen. Convention and summerlong form had abandoned the Red Sox during a steep slide that left them tied with the Rays. Francona’s lineup reflected their desperation. Jon Lester was pitching on three days’ rest, and he provided six solid innings. Ryan Lavarnway, the September call-up who started at catcher Tuesday night by default and hit the first two home runs of his major league career, was behind the plate again despite the availability of the semi-regular Jarrod Saltalamacchia. Lavarnway hit fifth against the Orioles’ right-hander Alfredo Simon while Crawford batted eighth, his contract notwithstanding. “Right now what we do as a team is so much more important than what we do individually,” said Francona, with the mind-set of a franchise teetering on the abyss. Lavarnway did not get a big hit but he acquitted himself well when Scutaro fielded a fifth-inning bouncer by Reimold and threw out Mark Reynolds trying to score from third. Scutaro also made a terrific play in the sixth. With two on and none out, he ranged far to his left for Vladimir Guerrero ’s grounder and flipped behind him to Pedroia to start a 6-4-3 double play. The Rays were still losing. The Red Sox had every reason to believe. Big trouble seemed to be brewing for the Red Sox when Alfredo Aceves — a former Yankee in the ever-thickening plot — hit two batters when play resumed in the seventh. But Aceves struck out Andino and got the troublesome J. J. Hardy on a bouncer before giving way to Daniel Bard in the eighth and Papelbon in the ninth, when it all went awry. Papelbon struck out the first two hitters he faced before Chris Davis smacked a double to deep right. He got two strikes Reimold, who drove an outside fastball into the right-center gap for a ground-rule double. Then came Andino’s drive toward Crawford, whose inability to catch it concluded a dismal first season in Boston. While the Orioles celebrated, the Red Sox trudged into their clubhouse, just in time to see Longoria’s second home run of the game in St. Petersburg officially end their season. Asked for a reaction to the extraordinary circumstances, Papelbon said, “What do you expect my reaction to be?” His wide-eyed, almost shell-shocked look said it all.

Baseball
Playoffs
Jon Lester
Tampa Bay Rays


Ohio: Surviving Exotic Animals to Be Returned to Owner’s Widow

Abstract: A zoo says it will transfer five exotic animals on Friday to the widow of the animals’ owner. The owner, Terry Thompson, released dozens of wild creatures , including black bears, mountain lions and Bengal tigers, last fall before killing himself. Two leopards, two primates and a bear have been held at the Columbus Zoo since October under a state-issued quarantine order, which was lifted Monday. A friend of the widow, Marian Thompson, said she planned to take the animals back to her farm in Zanesville, in eastern Ohio. Mr. Thompson released 56 animals before killing himself. Fearing for the public’s safety, the authorities killed a majority of the animals. The five animals that were quarantined are the survivors. The zoo had to euthanize one leopard.

Thompson Terry
Thompson Marian
Animals
Zoos
Zanesville (Ohio)


For P.G.A., Revamped Course Presents New Challenges

Abstract: The P.G.A. Championship, the last of the year’s four major tournaments, returns this week to the Atlanta Athletic Club for the first time since 2001, and the gussied-up, slicked-back golf course will be longer, tougher and faster than the one on which David Toms won his lone major by holding off Phil Mickelson a decade ago. Comparing today’s 7,467-yard course with the 1976 version, where a youthful Jerry Pate hit his memorable 5-iron onto the green at the 72nd hole to seal his United States Open victory, is like putting a rotary telephone next to the latest iPhone . Revisions by the renowned architect Rees Jones in 2006 have settled in, and with its narrow fairways of Diamond Zoysia grass leading to ultrafast undulating greens, all bordered by thick Bermuda rough, his creation might be tougher than medical school finals. Martin Kaymer of Germany, the P.G.A. Championship winner last year at Whistling Straits, played the Atlanta Athletic Club three months ago and said it was no picnic. “It’s very difficult,” Kaymer said. “Very long and very tight. I think they have three different kinds of grasses. So it will be very interesting. I think that there won’t be a lot of low scores.” Mickelson played the course last week and liked the fairways, but not the greens. “I really liked the layout, tee to green, from 2001,” Mickelson said. “I always thought it was a pretty straightforward, good test of golf. It’s in incredible shape; the fairways are a wonderful grass where the ball sits up and you can really hit shots off of it. “The rough is challenging, but I feel like there are areas where it opens up where they have a first cut and it’s really a fair test. The thick rough is hard; it’s wedge it out. But there are some spots where the first-cut extends 10 yards into the primary rough, so I thought that was very fair and well set up.” “The greens are a bit overdone,” he said. “When I played they were way too undulating for the speed they were at. So, I guess they’re probably going to have to slow them down. When the greens were redone, they were extremely over-contoured.” He said the green speed when he played Monday was about a 13 on the Stimpmeter, which, when combined with severe slopes, can make the surfaces almost unplayable. “The balls wouldn’t stop on the green,” Mickelson said. Jones responded that the green contours are the same as they were in 2001. “The grass has been changed to an ultradwarf Bermuda rather than bentgrass, which makes them firmer and faster,” Jones added. “To some degree, Phil is right, though. The greens were very fast when he played the other day — probably 14 on the Stimpmeter — and they’re going to slow them down.” How much they are slowed will be determined. Jones’s guess was to 12 or 13; Mickelson’s wish was 10. Past major championships at the Atlanta Athletic Club have produced historic shots and fascinating winners. One of golf’s most-revered figures, Bobby Jones, had a hand in bringing the 1976 United States Open to the golf course. Jones, the founder of the Masters, interceded on the club’s behalf to the United States Golf Association, and its invitation letter for the club to host the Open arrived a few weeks before Jones’s death in 1971. In the third round of his 2001 win over Mickelson, Toms hit a 5-wood shot into the hole at the 243-yard, par-3 15th hole. Last week, Tiger Woods played the hole and had a different experience. “We played a center pin from the back tee, and it was 265,” Woods said. “Not too many par-3s you play at 265. It’s going to be a very trying test.” A plaque in the right rough at the 18th hole commemorates Pate’s shot, a 5-iron over the pond from 194 yards that stopped 2-feet from the hole at the ‘76 Open. Earlier this year at the Players Championship, Pate — who this year received a special exemption into the P.G.A. Championship field of 156 players — recalled the shot. “For years people had said that to hit it this close on the last hole of the U.S. Open with the pin on the left and the water on the left you had to pull it,” Pate said. “Nobody would do it. I said, ‘Hey, at 22 years old you don’t know what pull is. You’re just, boom.’ ” It is a safe bet that Pate, 57, will not be hitting a 5-iron for his second shot this year. Along with No. 2, a par-4 that has been stretched to 512 yards, the par-4 18th has been lengthened to 507 yards. Perhaps a hybrid or a fairway wood will do. In the end, the golf course will favor long, straight drivers — think the reigning Open champion Rory McIlroy, the resurgent Adam Scott, the long-hitting Gary Woodland, Jason Day, Rickie Fowler and Sergio García. But hitting fairways will not be enough. Some touch on the greens will also be a must. If Mickelson can straighten out his driver, and if Tiger Woods can do the same, they could be in the hunt. “If they play it all the way back from the markers, it’s seven par-4s over 450, so it’s going to be a pretty long test,” Wood said. Barring a deluge and a major softening and slowing of the greens, there probably will not be any traditionalists bemoaning a low winning score, as they did when McIlroy shot a record 16 under par to win the Open at Congressional. For those who enjoy seeing pain and suffering inflicted on the pros, the P.G.A. Championship might be their chance.

Golf
PGA Championship
Mickelson Phil
Woods Tiger
Kaymer Martin
Atlanta Athletic Club (Golf)


Critics Say North Carolina Is Curbing Black Vote. Again.

Abstract: FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — When a federal appeals court overturned much of North Carolina’s sweeping 2013 election law last month, saying it had been deliberately intended to discourage African-Americans from voting, something else was tossed out as well: the ground rules for this year’s elections in a critical swing state. In each of the state’s 100 counties, local elections boards scheduled new hearings and last week filed the last of their new election rules with the state. Now, critics are accusing some of the boards, all of which are controlled by Republicans, of staging an end run around a court ruling they are supposed to carry out. Like the law that was struck down, say voting rights advocacy groups and some Democrats who are contesting the rewritten election plans, many election plans have been intentionally written to suppress the black vote. “It is equal to voter suppression in its worst way,” said Courtney Patterson, the sole Democrat on the Lenoir County elections board. He was referring to a proposal by the board’s two Republicans to allow 106.5 hours of early voting before the Nov. 8 election — less than a quarter of the time allowed in the 2012 presidential election — and to limit early balloting to a single polling place in the county seat of a largely rural eastern North Carolina county that sprawls over 403 square miles. In a county where Democrats outnumber Republicans by better than two to one, and four in 10 voters are black, the election plan limits voting to a single weekend day, and on weekdays demands that residents, including those who are poor and do not own cars, make long trips to cast a ballot. Republicans, who wrote and passed the 2013 law and control all 100 county election boards, deny the rules reflect anything inappropriate. “Purely bogus,” Robin C. Hayes, the state Republican Party chairman, said Tuesday in an interview. “In fact, we’re working hard to increase the vote from every region and from every interest group. And by the way, no great surprise: We want them to vote Republican.” Politics is a contact sport, he added, and no one should be surprised that Republicans and Democrats alike try to stage elections on terms that favor their party. Image Voting rules posted at a ballot station in Greensboro, N.C., in March. A federal appeals court last month struck down the state’s voter identification law. Credit Andrew Krech/News & Record, via Associated Press Mr. Patterson said he was puzzled by the way the rules had been written. “These are two very fine people that I’ve worked with on this board,” he said. “It’s just sad to say that I don’t know whatever is causing them to act this way.” Actually, the roots of North Carolina’s latest conflict over voting seem apparent. Republicans and Democrats here are in hand-to-hand combat this election year as seldom before. Contests for president and United States senator are neck and neck, and the Republican governor, Pat McCrory, is in a tough bid for re-election. Two congressional races are unfolding in districts whose boundaries were ordered redrawn this year after a federal court ruled that they had been gerrymandered to dilute black voters’ influence. While Republicans scoff at the notion that they have sought to suppress an overwhelmingly Democratic black vote, they make no apologies for pursuing every legal opportunity that exists to win elections. “Does anybody think that Democrats did not select early voting sites and set hours to advantage their voters over Republicans?” Dallas Woodhouse , the executive director of North Carolina’s Republican Party, wrote this week, referring to the days when the statehouse was in Democratic hands. “We are just attempting to rebalance the scales.” That statement was in a letter to The Raleigh News & Observer , which stirred a small sensation this month after it acquired an email that Mr. Woodhouse had sent to Republican election-board members and other party stalwarts after the court ruling that invalidated the 2013 law. In it, he stated that Republican election officials “can and should make party-line changes” to the rules governing early voting periods, and urged them to oppose other measures — like Sunday hours for early voting sites, and polling places on college campuses — that are commonly said to aid Democratic turnout. Mr. Woodhouse did not respond to requests for an interview. Officials of some advocacy groups say, however, that the appeals court decision and the general ferocity of this year’s election have turned the arcane process of choosing election sites and polling hours into a partisan battleground. “It has become more politicized, unfortunately,” Bob Hall, the executive director of the election-rights group Democracy North Carolina , said in an interview. “With the Dallas Woodhouse memo, that kind of mentality has made the Democrats say, ‘O.K. — we’ll fight hard, too.’” According to the state Board of Elections, which certifies local rules, 66 of the 100 county boards — which each have two Republicans and one Democrat — have submitted bipartisan proposals for the November vote. But the remaining 34 boards could not agree on a plan; frequently, Republican and Democratic members offered rival plans to the state. Image A protest in Guilford County, N.C., on Aug. 8 against a Republican plan to cut early voting sites. Credit Joseph Rodriguez/News & Record, via Associated Press Not all the splits are deep or glaringly partisan, but many are. “We’re in the neighborhood of 10, up to 20 that are really problematic,” said Allison Riggs, a lawyer with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Durham, N.C. The State Board of Elections — also in Republican hands — is empowered to impose its own plan when local boards are split. Ms. Riggs, who helped argue the 2013 case, said her group might challenge some election plans if it deemed the state’s solutions unfair to black voters. What constitutes unfairness, however, is no simple question. The federal appeals court ruling against the 2013 election law broadly said that given North Carolina’s history of racial discrimination in voting, Republicans could not roll back voting rules that benefited African-Americans without compelling reasons. Among many other changes, for example, the 2013 law cut the state’s early voting period to 10 days from 17 and eliminated a Sunday balloting day. Republican legislators argued that those reductions were innocuous because the law also required counties to offer at least as many hours of early voting as in past years — either by adding polling places or keeping the existing ones open longer. The appeals court disputed that, noting that a disproportionate number of African-Americans voted early — especially during the first week of balloting that the law abolished — and that voting after Sunday church services had become an African-American tradition. Reducing the early voting period not only struck directly at black voting habits, the court said, but also increased the prospect of long lines and polling delays during the compressed early voting period and on Election Day. But when the appeals court ordered counties to restore the early voting period to 17 days, it left decisions about the number of polling places and their operating hours up to local election boards. The result is that some of the newly proposed election plans explicitly cut voting hours below previous levels, and outlaw Sunday voting altogether. Democrats and voting-rights advocates call the cuts a conspiracy to depress black turnout. But Republican election officials deny that, citing religious objections to Sunday voting, the need to give election workers a day off and, in some cases, difficulty in making late changes in voting schedules, when schools, community centers and other polling places had already made plans. In urban Mecklenburg County, where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two to one, the number of registered voters has risen 5 percent since 2012. But the majority Republican plan envisions a nearly 9 percent reduction from 2012 in early voting hours, and would limit balloting to six sites during the first week of the 17-day period, then to 22 sites for the remaining 10 days. And in heavily Democratic Cumberland County, which includes Fayetteville, the elections board this summer unanimously adopted a 10-day early voting plan that included Sunday voting. After the appeals court ruling, the Republican-backed plan omitted Sunday voting. Neither that plan nor a competing Democratic proposal has been adopted.

North Carolina
Voter registration
Election
Black People,African-Americans


Al Cervi, Hall of Fame N.B.A. Player-Coach, Dies at 92

Abstract: Al Cervi, a tenacious backcourt player in the early years of professional basketball and later a Hall of Fame coach who led the Syracuse Nationals to the 1955 N.B.A. championship, died Monday in Rochester. He was 92 and lived in Brighton, N.Y. He died in a hospice, The Associated Press reported. Cervi (pronounced SUR-vee) was a 5-foot-11 guard and one of the strongest of the 1940s and ’50s. His Hall of Fame biography calls him “an intense competitor with superior defensive skills, an explosive one-on-one offensive player.” He started playing pro basketball in 1937 with the Buffalo Bisons of the new National Basketball League after dropping out of high school in his junior year. He never went to college. As a pro, he initially earned $15 a game and acquired the nickname Digger for his gritty, dogged approach to the game. After five years in the Army Air Forces, including service in World War II, he joined the Rochester Royals, a new N.B.L. team, in 1946. His teammates included the future Hall of Famers Bob Davies and Red Holzman, who went on to coach the Knicks; Otto Graham, a future Hall of Fame quarterback; and Chuck Connors, who became a television star as the title character on “The Rifleman.” The Royals won the league championship in Cervi’s first season; in his second, he was the league’s leading scorer and most valuable player. In his third season — he was by then a player-coach — he was an all-star and the coach of the year. He moved to the Syracuse Nationals as player-coach in 1948, a year before the N.B.L. and the Basketball Association of America merged to become the National Basketball Association. He was player-coach until 1953 and full-time coach until he was fired during the 1956-57 season, after the Nationals got off to a slow start. He coached the Philadelphia Warriors in the 1958-59 season. As a player in that low-scoring era, Cervi averaged 7.9 points a game. His coaching record was 366-264, and his Nationals won the 1955 N.B.A. title by defeating the Fort Wayne Pistons in the finals. Cervi was inducted as a coach into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, in Springfield, Mass., in 1985. Recalling his coaching years, The Syracuse Post-Standard wrote in 1997, “The Nationals shot poorly but succeeded because they played Cervi-style basketball: nasty, with an emphasis on defense.” Cervi knew what he wanted on offense, too. “Al didn’t like plays,” Dolph Schayes, one of his Hall of Fame players, told The New York Times in an interview in 2007. “We played a lot of freelance ball, Eastern style, good, aggressive, fundamental, high post, lot of movement.” Alfred Nicholas Cervi was born Feb. 12, 1917, in Buffalo and grew up playing sandlot basketball and semipro ball in high school before the Bisons invited him to play for them. He is survived by his wife of 68 years, Ruth; a son, Allen; his daughters Kathleen Cervi and Marcia Mundrick, and four grandchildren. Cervi always admired Holzman, particularly because Holzman stressed defense when he coached the Knicks to titles in 1970 and 1973. To Cervi, the modern game had put too much emphasis on offense and not enough on defensive skills. “I don’t know what they’re talking about today when they talk defense,” he said in an interview quoted in “Who’s Who of Sports Champions” (Houghton Mifflin, 1995). “Your hand has to be in your man’s face. You don’t let him get the ball. The first thing in good defense is to keep the ball from your man.”

Basketball
Coaches and Managers
National Basketball Assn
Deaths (Obituaries)
Cervi Al


Factory Orders Rebound on Demand for Transportation Goods

Abstract: WASHINGTON — New orders for factory goods in the United States rebounded strongly in June on robust demand for transportation equipment and other goods, a hopeful sign for the struggling manufacturing sector. The Commerce Department said on Tuesday that new orders for manufactured goods increased 1.8 percent after declining 1.1 percent in May. Factory activity has been stymied by a strong dollar and spending cuts in the energy sector after last year's sharp plunge in crude oil prices . Tepid global demand also has weighed on manufacturing, which accounts for about 12 percent of the domestic economy. Those factors have eroded the profits of multinational companies like Caterpillar, Procter & Gamble and Whirlpool. Though there are signs that the energy spending drag is easing, the dollar's strength will probably remain a constraint. The dollar has gained 15 percent against the currencies of the United States' main trading partners since June 2014. Orders for transportation equipment surged 9.3 percent in June, reflecting a 65.4 percent jump in aircraft bookings. There also were increases in orders for machinery, furniture, fabricated metal products and electrical equipment, appliances and components. The department also said orders for nonmilitary capital goods excluding aircraft, seen as a measure of business confidence and spending plans, increased 0.7 percent, lower than the 0.9 percent rise reported last month. Shipments of these so-called core capital goods, which are used to calculate business equipment spending in the gross domestic product report, increased 0.3 percent in June. Shipments were previously reported to have dipped 0.1 percent. The upward revisions to core capital goods shipments, combined with a report on Monday showing stronger construction spending in May and April than previously reported, suggest second-quarter G.D.P. could be revised higher when the government publishes its second estimate later this year. The Commerce Department reported last week that the economy expanded at a 2.3 percent annual pace in the second quarter. A 0.6 percent increase in manufacturing inventories in June also pointed to an upward revision to second-quarter G.D.P. The rise in inventories followed a 0.1 percent gain in May. Unfilled orders at factories were unchanged in June after two straight months of decreases, potentially signaling stability in factory activity.

Commerce Department
Procter & Gamble
Manufacturing
Oil and Gasoline


After Allmendinger Suspension, Drivers Debate Testing System

Abstract: LOUDON, N.H. (AP) — Carl Edwards wants drivers to pay for a drug testing system to help avoid mistakes that he said could occur under the program operated by Nascar that led to the suspension of A. J. Allmendinger. “It’s an imperfect world,” Edwards, last year’s Sprint Cup runner-up, said Friday before qualifying for Sunday’s race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. “People are imperfect. Tests are imperfect. “We need to have our own group that is paid by us, that works for us, to be here in tandem with the Nascar drug testers and have them test us at the same time. I don’t think it would be a contentious thing. I think that would remove almost all doubt in any situation of a positive test.” But Brad Keselowski, a teammate of Allmendinger, criticized Edwards’s proposal. “I don’t think we need more politics involved in the sport, and that’s what groups like that bring in,” Keselowski said. He says drivers should not be allowed to take any supplements, not even Flintstone vitamins. Permitting some of them leaves a gray area of what should and should not be allowed, Keselowski said. “I don’t think there needs to be any committee that approves drugs or supplements or whatever it is,” he said. “I just think you shouldn’t be allowed to take anything. “You should just man up and drive the damn racecar.” Allmendinger was suspended about 90 minutes before the race at Daytona International Speedway last weekend after his “A” urine sample taken the previous weekend at Kentucky Speedway came back positive. He has requested that his “B” sample be tested and plans to have his toxicologist present when that is done, probably in the coming week. Even if that test is negative, Allmendinger’s future in the sport is in danger, Keselowski said. “It doesn’t make a difference,” he said. “It’s still a death sentence. Within this sport, we rely on sponsors and reputation.” Allmendinger, 22nd in the Sprint Cup standings, tested positive for a stimulant, according to a statement Wednesday by his business manager. Nascar has a policy of not identifying the substance. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and other drivers expressed strong faith in the current testing policy, begun in 2009. “I’m certain that as big and structured an organization as Nascar is and the agency they have that works with them on their drug program, they can’t make any mistakes,” Earnhardt said. “They can’t afford to make any mistakes. I assume, although I don’t have any answers or don’t know anything about this particular incident, I have to believe that they’re making the right calls and the right choices.” The Sprint Cup points leader, Matt Kenseth, also expressed support for the system being used, but he said he was withholding judgment on Allmendinger until the results of the “B” sample are known. “They did a lot of things when they put that system in place to make it as fair as they can,” Kenseth said. “I believe that Nascar is going to err on the side of caution. I think they’re going to be pretty darn careful before they do something that could really jeopardize somebody’s career. So I’d have a hard time believing that it’s not pretty rock solid or I don’t think Nascar would have reacted liked that.” Sam Hornish Jr. replaced Allmendinger in the Daytona race and will drive again Sunday. “It’s an unfortunate situation for everybody here because it just takes away from the program as a whole because everybody is focused on something that is not productive for us,” Hornish said. Several drivers had questions, including why Nascar waited until just before a race to suspend a driver for a test taken nearly a week earlier. “I don’t necessarily understand 100 percent the timing of why that takes so long,” Kevin Harvick said. “It seemed like an odd situation to be right before the race.” Jeff Gordon wondered what the banned substance linked to Allmendinger was. “We’ve got to wait to hear more results,” Gordon said. “I hope we get a full story. You certainly like to know what it is” Nascar’s drug policy defines a stimulant as “amphetamine, methamphetamine, Ecstasy (MDMA), Eve (MDEA), MDA, PMA, Phentermine and other amphetamine derivatives and related compounds.” The driver Jimmie Johnson said that several days before taking a supplement, he makes sure that its contents are approved. “We’re all paying attention a lot now and wondering,” he said.

A J Allmendinger
Drug test
NASCAR
Car Racing
Carl Edwards


College Student Missing After Plane Lands in a Long Island Harbor

Abstract: SETAUKET, N.Y. — The police searched on Sunday for a 23-year-old City College student from Queens who was aboard a small plane that made a forced landing in the frigid waters of Setauket Harbor off the North Shore of Long Island after its engine malfunctioned, the authorities said. Three other men who were on the plane, a single-engine Piper Archer, were rescued shortly after it hit the water about 60 miles east of New York City around 11 p.m. on Saturday, according to the Suffolk County police. Two police boats with divers scoured the harbor for the missing man, Gerson Salmon-Negron, through Sunday afternoon, Timothy D. Sini, the Suffolk County police commissioner, said at a waterside news conference. Later, the police said their mission had gone from search-and-rescue to recovery. The operation was suspended after nightfall, to be resumed on Monday morning. Mr. Salmon-Negron, a business student whose LinkedIn page said he also worked for FedEx, expected to graduate in June, said Shara Lazar, a friend who was waiting for word of Mr. Salmon-Negron with relatives and others at the family’s apartment in Elmhurst, Queens. “This is a very difficult time,” she said, noting that Mr. Salmon-Negron had been on a trip with friends. The other men aboard the plane when it went down were identified by the police as Austricio Ramirez, 25, of the Bronx; Nelson Gomez, 36, of Queens; and Wady Perez, 25, also of Queens. They were treated at Stony Brook University Hospital and released, the police said. The plane left Fitchburg Municipal Airport in Fitchburg, Mass., about 50 miles northwest of Boston, and was heading for Republic Airport in Farmingdale, N.Y., when the engine malfunctioned, the police said. At the time, Mr. Ramirez, a student pilot, was at the controls, the police said. Mr. Gomez, a flight instructor, took over when the trouble started. The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that the plane’s pilot had reported an engine problem shortly before it went down. The agency said the plane was bound for Long Island MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma. It was not clear why the local police provided a different destination. The F.A.A. said in its statement that it was investigating and that the National Transportation Safety Board would determine the probable cause of the accident. Late Sunday, workers using a crane on a barge pulled the red-and-white aircraft from the water. An online database indicated it was registered to the Positive Rate Gear Up Flight Club, based in Farmingdale. The club’s website showed the plane as being part of the group’s fleet of eight small aircraft. Jayne Ann Klein, who lives in the hamlet of Strongs Neck on a bluff overlooking the harbor, saw the lights of the plane as it was losing altitude. “He just kind of glided in, very quiet,” Ms. Klein said. “There was no big, violent thing. There was no crash.” A short time later, she said, a police officer pulled his cruiser into the family’s driveway. Without saying a word, he jumped out and ran down the backyard steps that led to a beach about 65 feet below. The officer, Charles Scala, said that when he got to the beach he saw a man whose energy appeared to be flagging trying to wade ashore. Officer Scala said he waded out to the man with a life ring and dragged him to safety. Ms. Klein’s husband, George, said he got to the beach in time to help bring the man ashore. “He didn’t have any visible injuries, but he was definitely suffering from hypothermia and shock,” Mr. Klein said. The water temperature was 37 degrees at the time, according to the police. The man wore a white shirt with epaulets, Ms. Klein said. According to Mr. Klein, the man said the plane’s engine had stopped working and that all four people on board had managed to get out of the plane after it hit the water. Other officers responding to the scene commandeered kayaks, apparently from nearby houses. Sgt. Paul Mercready of the county police said he reached one of the men by kayak just as he appeared to be losing consciousness and about to slip underwater. Sergeant Mercready said he removed his belt and looped it through the other man’s belt to keep him close. Mr. Ramirez had documented the flight on Facebook. At 10:42 a.m. Saturday, he posted a picture of himself, along with the words, “Perfect weather to fly.” In the photo, he is wearing a white shirt with epaulets and a necktie. Later, he posted a short video taken from inside the plane. It shows him at the controls as the aircraft is taking off. Another short video shows the plane landing in Boston. At 7:26 p.m. he posted a photo with the words, “About to fly back to nyc.”

Plane Crash
Long Island
Gerson Salmon-Negron


Upgrades for L Train, but Not More Praise

Abstract: The embrace comes in stages for the people of the L train, if it comes at all. There were the new cars, twinkling beneath Williamsburg and Bushwick in Brooklyn, and the countdown clocks that could, in real time, communicate an evening’s captivity to the line’s fickle whims. “Somewhere between love and hate,” one rider, Jane Kwett, wrote on the review website Yelp, “runs a train named L.” Yet with each passing year, the reality has shifted, even if perception has been slow to catch up. According to data to be released this week by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, ridership on the L increased at every station last year, and the authority has added service during both rush hours and off-peak periods in a bid to keep up with wide-scale population growth. More trains will be added in June. Occasionally, the L has found itself in the unusual position of being praised. It is the only line in the system that uses an advanced signaling system known as communications-based train control, and the only lettered line with the countdown clocks. Last week, the Straphangers Campaign, a rider advocacy group, named the L the cleanest of all subway lines. Image The L was recently named the cleanest of all subway lines. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times “It went from zero to hero in the last couple years,” said Gene Russianoff, the staff lawyer for the group. “The L, I think, has become chic.” This is a matter of intense debate and, accordingly, the recent changes have created something of a divide: There are the veterans of the L train, who recall the sleepy, inglorious line of decades past, and more recent adopters, many of whom are living in New York City for the first time. “It has its share of problems,” Jamie Claxton, 32, from Bushwick, said of the line. “It comes so quickly,” said Lea Jackson, 21, another Bushwick resident. “This is the only schema I have for how a rail system should work,” said James Pierce, 25, a Williamsburg resident who recently moved from Los Angeles. Few transit topics can inspire the passion of an L train review. There is perhaps no ridership as intimately connected to the identity of its line, considered at turns the creative id of a new Brooklyn — one rider recently crocheted an entire subway car for Valentine’s Day — and a rumbling monument to gentrification’s curse. Image Lenny Parado and Lea Hirschfeld, both of Montreal, kiss while riding the L train in Manhattan. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times It is not the only line in the city that showcases knit caps, skinny jeans and intrepid takes on the mustache, but it is almost certainly the most prolific. Adam Lisberg, the authority’s chief spokesman, suggested that the train’s reputation remained checkered at least in part because of the backgrounds of many of its riders. “It’s a line that likes to complain a lot on social media,” he said. A recent BuzzFeed post was titled “19 Reasons the L Train Is a Soul-Crushing Nightmare.” The website isthelrunning.com has attracted a small following — sample content: “M.T.A. says good service, yo” — though it has been dwarfed by another site with an unprintable name and an identical premise. Still, transit officials acknowledge the genuine toll that service disruptions can take on L train passengers with few other subway options, and the strain of significant overcrowding on many commutes. At the Bedford Avenue station, weekday ridership has climbed by more than 50 percent since 2007, the authority said. Several other stops have seen sustained increases as neighborhoods continue to gentrify along the line’s eastbound tracks. Even those who agreed that the line has improved were stingy with praise, as if afraid that the train would punish their faith with snarled service. Image The L train is the only lettered line with countdown clocks. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times Noel Allain, 37, the artistic director at a theater in Bushwick, recalled that weekend shutdowns often made it difficult for audiences to travel to performances. Recent months have been better, he said, though he remained on guard. “People are pretty reticent to change their opinion about it,” he said, allowing that the L was, at minimum, “considered better than the G.” Richard Kostelanetz, 73, a writer and artist who lives off the Halsey Street stop, likened the new L to St. Marks Place in the 1960s. His generation could be divided into two camps, he said: those who ride the L and those who have never been aboard “and will boast about it.” Perhaps most troublesome is the train’s record in chivalry. Lindsey Hughes, 26, said she had tried to avoid the line whenever possible during her recent pregnancy because L riders were far less likely than others to surrender a seat. In December, she went into early labor while on the L train. Someone stood up, she said, but only “after checking to see if I was in labor first.” As Ms. Hughes spoke, her son August was transfixed by one of the L’s cultural offerings: break dancing aboard a moving train . Her husband, Chris, shielded the boy from flailing limbs. “His first subway ride,” she said.

Subway
Gentrification
Brooklyn
Williamsburg Brooklyn
MTA
Bushwick Brooklyn


Disney Profit Up on ‘Wild Hogs’

Abstract: The Walt Disney Company said yesterday that its quarterly profit rose 27 percent on the surprise hit movie “Wild Hogs” and higher advertising rates at ABC television. Net income rose to $931 million, or 44 cents a share, from $733 million, or 37 cents a share, a year earlier, Disney said. Sales in the period, which ended March 31 and was the second quarter of Disney’s fiscal year, increased less than 1 percent, to $8.07 billion. Disney generated $235 million in operating profit at its movie unit, a 60 percent increase from a year earlier, driven by “Wild Hogs,” which took in $216 million in box-office sales worldwide. Broadcast unit profit, including ABC television, rose by one-third to $212 million on syndication sales and new shows like “Ugly Betty.” Profit surpassed the 36-cent average estimate of 16 analysts compiled by Bloomberg. Revenue at the broadcast unit, including ABC and Disney’s radio stations, fell 7 percent, to $1.66 billion, reflecting a decline in sports programming on the network, the company said. Shares of Disney rose 49 cents, to $36.55.


Czechs Win Biathlon Relay

Abstract: The Czech Republic won a second successive World Cup women’s biathlon relay in tough conditions in Ruhpolding, Germany. Belarus, led by the three-time Olympic gold medalist Darya Domracheva, was second.

Biathlon
Czech Republic
Darya Domracheva


Harden Paces Rockets to Win Over 76ers

Abstract: James Harden had 35 points, and the visiting Houston Rockets defeated the Philadelphia 76ers, 104-93, to improve to 4-0. ■ Marc Gasol had 16 points and Zach Randolph had 15 as the host Memphis Grizzlies beat the New Orleans Pelicans, 93-81, and extended their franchise-best start to 4-0. ■ Chandler Parsons scored 29 points, and the Dallas Mavericks held off the visiting Boston Celtics, 118-113, after leading by 31 in the second quarter.

Basketball
Memphis Grizzlies
New Orleans Pelicans
Mavericks
Celtics
Houston Rockets
76ers


Jim Seymour, Star Receiver at Notre Dame, Dies at 64

Abstract: Jim Seymour, a speedy, lanky, glue-fingered end who helped lead Notre Dame to a national championship in 1966 and who became a prototype for a new breed of wide receiver as college football teams began to rely more on the passing game, died on Tuesday in Highland Park, Ill. He was 64 and lived in Deerfield, Ill. The cause was cancer, the university said. Seymour played three years for the Chicago Bears in the National Football League , but he made his name as an athlete in college. At 6 feet 4 inches, weighing more than 200 pounds and able to run 100 yards in less than 10 seconds, he was bigger and faster than virtually any other college receiver at the time, a physical type who set a standard for the position long before the likes of Keyshawn Johnson, Randy Moss and Terrell Owens ever caught a pass. Seymour made all-American teams in each of his three seasons at Notre Dame, where he and quarterback Terry Hanratty helped transform a team known for its defense into an offensive powerhouse. By the time he graduated in 1969, Seymour was the career receiving leader at Notre Dame, with 138 catches for 2,113 yards — an average of more than 15 yards a catch — and 16 touchdowns. In 1965, the Fighting Irish, coached by Ara Parseghian, had gone 7-2-1 and given up only 73 points, but without a solid passing attack they had ended the year scoring a total of 3 points in their last two games. Enter Seymour and Hanratty, who had been recruited by Parseghian in the hope of replacing a previous twosome, the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback John Huarte and the receiver Jack Snow, who had graduated in 1964. Hanratty and Seymour were both sophomores in 1966 — at the time N.C.A.A. regulations barred freshmen from playing varsity football — and their presence made an immediate impact. In their first game, a victory against Purdue, Seymour caught 13 passes for 276 yards, which remains a Notre Dame record. Throughout college football, passing games were exploding that year, so much so that in midseason Time magazine ran a story proclaiming a revolution in the game. On the cover was a painting of Hanratty and Seymour. Seymour missed three games that season because of injury, but after a famous 10-10 tie against another undefeated team, Michigan State, a game in which Hanratty was hurt, Notre Dame clinched a national championship the next week by beating Southern California, 51-0, a game in which Seymour caught 11 passes for 150 yards and 2 touchdowns. “We had a great team,” Hanratty said in an interview Thursday, recalling that the defense had future pro standouts in Jim Lynch, Pete Duranko, Kevin Hardy and Alan Page and a fine running back in Nick Eddy, all holdovers from the previous season. “The only two question marks were the two snot-nose sophomores.” Hanratty said he and Seymour got to know each other by working out together in an old field house, a dirt-floor arena with a ceiling so low that any long pass had to be looped over the roof support beams. “We got to know each other so well that I knew his every move, when he was going to cut inside, when he was going to cut outside,” said Hanratty, who played eight years in the N.F.L. “Anyway, it was so different back then. Jim was 6-foot-4, 215, and ran like a deer; he was a hard cover for anyone. I mean, add 30 more pounds to him and he’s a lineman. I’ve got a son going to Notre Dame this fall, and he’s 6-5 and 300. I tell him he’s bigger than anybody I ever played with in college or the pros.” James Patrick Seymour was born in Detroit on Nov. 24, 1946, and grew up in suburban Berkley, Mich. A hamstring injury in a college all-star game in his senior year at Notre Dame cut down his speed and curtailed his pro career, after which he owned an insurance agency in Arlington Heights, Ill. His survivors include his wife of 41 years, the former Nancy Garvey; three sons, James, Jeffrey and Todd; four brothers, a sister and six grandchildren. Many who saw Seymour play at Notre Dame recall his extraordinary grace as a pass-catcher. As Time described him, he could “ ‘juke’ his hips, dip his shoulder, toss his head, flutter his eyelashes, and leave a safety man twisted up like a pretzel as he cuts downfield for a pass.” The magazine continued: “He can then leap four feet straight up and pluck a football out of the sky — with such tenderness that one observer reported: ‘You can stand right next to him and never hear the ball hit his hands.’ ”

James Patrick Seymour
Football
Deaths (Obituaries)
University of Notre Dame
Illinois
Chicago Bears
National Football League
Terry Hanratty
College Athletics


Repeating History in a Brooklyn Restaurant

Abstract: HANGING on a wall at James, a new restaurant in the ground floor of an apartment building in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, is a captivating painting of a nattily dressed man whose dark eyes seem to be watching the diners. His swept-back hair, pale complexion and handlebar mustache suggest a turn-of-the-last-century British provenance, as does the inscrutable expression. Since the restaurant opened in June, patrons have been asking the owners, Bryan Calvert and Deborah Williamson, about the man in the portrait and wondering why it hangs in so conspicuous a place. Naturally, there’s a story to tell. The painting was hung by Mr. Calvert, a chef, and his wife, Ms. Williamson, an events producer, who live above the restaurant. When the previous tenant, another restaurant, announced it was closing, the couple decided to open their own place (Mr. Calvert had cooked at Union Pacific and Bouley Bakery, among other spots). And in designing the space, they incorporated elements of Mr. Calvert’s family, which has deep roots in the city. The man in the portrait is James Calvert, Bryan’s great-grandfather, an English horse groomer who came to New York in 1880. Settling in Harlem, James worked as a private cook for a wealthy family and then opened a restaurant, which closed after only a few years because, according to family lore, his partner ran off with the profits. He later returned to being a private cook and died in 1931, at the age of 69. Much of what is known about James comes from Bryan’s cousin Tom Calvert. A police detective in Nassau County, Tom Calvert has spent several years going through family papers and examining census and genealogical data to piece together a Calvert family history. For Bryan Calvert, the parallels between his life and his great-grandfather’s were compelling. Like James, Bryan worked as a private chef in New York (in his case, for the photographer Annie Leibovitz) and now he, too, was opening a restaurant. He decided to name the place after his ancestors, and his cousin redoubled his efforts to uncover more family history. Tom Calvert found several photographs of James, including a picture of him as an old man on his stoop in Harlem. The original of the image that hangs in the restaurant was too fragile to be restored, so a copy was commissioned from a Brazilian artist who works out of a tiny studio near the Brazilian Consulate and dresses in a three-piece suit, like a 1930s gangster. “He did a beautiful job, ” Tom Calvert said. The most revealing discovery was a notebook kept by James’s wife, Annie, an Irish immigrant who met her husband when they worked as domestics in the same household. The book is yellowed by age and contains layers of writing, making it nearly as hard as hieroglyphics to decipher, but its pages, a mix of the prosaic (coal receipts) and the poignant (a listing of the names and birth dates of Annie’s children, interspersed with the deaths of three of them), offer a window into the couple’s day-to-day life. A recreated image from the notebook is delivered to diners with their checks; another element that pays tribute to the past is a drink (rye, Cointreau, bitters, sweet vermouth and kumquat juice) called James’s Revenge. “That’s the tragedy of it, that he lost the restaurant,” Bryan Calvert said, adding with a wry smile, “As part of this, we’re going to track down the family of his former partner and sue them.”

Restaurants
Genealogy
Prospect Heights (NYC)


Josh Jarboe Looks to Continue His Revival in the N.F.L.

Abstract: JONESBORO, Ark. Deep in the Delta, across a four-lane road from a field of sheep, Josh Jarboe stood on a windswept stadium floor in mid-March, naked from the waist up. Virtually every inch of his torso, back and arms was inked: an angel, a scorpion, the Grim Reaper; the names of his mother, grandmother, little sister; the motto Live Now, Cry Later. His dreadlocks were pulled back and faded orange at the ends. When he smiled, as he did often, his mouth gleamed with gold. It was pro day at Arkansas State, one of dozens of last-look auditions around the country before this month’s N.F.L. draft. At least 16 scouts huddled around Jarboe with stopwatches and clipboards, examining him with the inscrutable gaze of county fair judges eyeballing a prize calf. Yet the men there to time, test and measure Jarboe, a 6-foot-2, 205-pound receiver , seemed less interested in how fast he ran the 40 than in answering the same question people have asked the last five years. Was Josh Jarboe a thug, or did he just play one on YouTube? The fallout from a freestyle rap video that Jarboe performed before his freshman season at Oklahoma — about assault rifles, sex and shooting somebody — has tailed him through four colleges in five years. Since leaving his sketchy neighborhood on the eastern edge of Atlanta, a hip-hop incubator where he played in strip clubs during high school and regularly ran into rap stars like Gucci Mane and Waka Flocka, Jarboe has landed in a series of decidedly un-urban outposts: Norman, Okla.; Troy, Ala.; Boonesville, Miss.; and now Jonesboro. It is one of the strangest, most circuitous routes of any player preparing for the draft. It is a path crossed by rap and guns — then rapping about guns, recorded in a dormitory lobby on an Oklahoma teammate’s cellphone and posted on YouTube. The video ignited an early national debate on privacy and social media. It also nearly extinguished Jarboe’s career. That was followed by an expulsion in Alabama, a rock-bottom stint at a junior college in Mississippi, and then resurrection in Arkansas by the coach at the center of the book and movie “The Blind Side.” Justified or not, Jarboe became the thug-life face of every talented college player who was ever kicked out of college and never heard from again. Except that he never quite went away. Many scouts and draft handicappers now predict that Jarboe, a big, physical wide receiver with uncommon quickness for his size, will be a late-round draft pick, or at least will be invited to an N.F.L. training camp. For the son of a single mother and a father who was a pimp, the initial payoff could be as much as $500,000. “I told him: ‘There’s a lot of money out here. Make sure you pick it up,’ ” said his agent, Chris Martin, a former N.F.L. player based in Chicago who flew in for the workout. But alert to the New Puritanism of sorts ushered in by Commissioner Roger Goodell, the scouts here wanted to be sure Jarboe was worth the risk. They grilled him for hours in private interviews. Most had talked with his many college coaches; Hugh Freeze, the “Blind Side” coach, who had Jarboe for a season at Arkansas State before moving to Mississippi, said about 10 N.F.L. teams had called. He told them what he tells everybody: “Josh is truly one of my favorites. He’s proven the last two years a change occurred.” Jarboe’s senior day escort was Freeze’s 14-year-old daughter. Last December, he also earned a degree in psychology. “Character is a big thing with N.F.L. scouts and teams,” said Jon Carr, a national scout for the Houston Texans. “You want to see if he’s matured and can handle being a pro. I think he’s a young man who knows he’s made a lot of mistakes. A lot of guys in the league have done that. But if he repeated those mistakes before, will he repeat them again?” Carr added: “Then there’s the video in Oklahoma. I haven’t watched that yet.” A Video’s Repercussions Image A video in which Josh Jarboe rapped before his freshman season at Oklahoma about AK’s, sex and shooting someone nearly ended his football career. Credit Lance Murphey for The New York Times It lasts just 74 seconds. The lighting is bad. It’s hard to tell if Jarboe’s dyed dreads are more red or fuchsia. Other students walk past and pay no attention. Somebody nearby can be heard playing pool. It was just a bunch of teammates, white and black, at the end of summer classes taking turns rapping into a phone camera inside “the Bud,” an athletic dorm named for the former Oklahoma coach Bud Wilkinson. Jarboe went last. The lyrics, off the top of his head, are an almost cartoonish mix of violence and profanity — standard issue from the American hip-hop songbook. Jarboe, whom some recruiters rated the third-best incoming freshman receiver in the country behind A. J. Green and Julio Jones, never gave the rap another thought. He flew to Atlanta the next day to visit family before the Sooners’ 2008 fall camp. A week later, the video had become a sensation. Jarboe had no idea what was going on when Coach Bob Stoops called and told him to take it down. It was too late: Jarboe’s hard looks and rough words had been shared and seen by tens of thousands of fans, alumni and boosters in Oklahoma and beyond. Stoops initially supported Jarboe. He said that the Internet had intruded on what previously was private space and that nobody could live up to that level of scrutiny. But Jarboe entered college on thin ice. That spring, before a high school track meet outside Atlanta, he was arrested in a friend’s parked car with a stolen gun. Jarboe contended that it was not his, and felony charges were reduced to misdemeanors. Cedar Grove High School expelled him; he graduated after completing his courses online. Oklahoma stuck by him but put him on a zero-tolerance leash. A day after Stoops’s public support, as pressure swelled from the news media, alumni and administrators, the coach called Jarboe to tell him his career at Oklahoma was over. Jarboe broke down. “It was the first time I saw football can be taken away,” he said. “Before, I was getting away with things. Then I saw it could all be shut down.” Sports columnists, bloggers and educators debated his exile. Some saw Jarboe as caught in a modern mash-up of street culture, technology and teenage cluelessness. Ray Bonner, Jarboe’s coach at Cedar Grove High, defended him as a victim of a cultural divide. “My players rap,” Bonner told The Oklahoman. “To Josh, he didn’t do anything because he wants to be a rapper.” Bonner later told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Bet he won’t do a video again — unless he’s being paid by Interscope Records.” A Tough Path Atlanta produces rappers the way other cities make cars or movies or software. So even as his football reputation spread as he grew up, Jarboe wanted to rap. “Where I come from, you didn’t see any football players; there were no Tom Bradys you’d run into,” Jarboe said. “Rappers and strippers were all I knew. I’d end up at a party and see T. I., Ludacris, Crime Mob. I wanted to be just like them.” Jarboe held an essential street credential. His father, Jerry, always around but in and out of his life, was a pimp with all the accessories: cars, clothes, and 19 children with six women. Jarboe knows all his brothers and sisters — like him, they have first and last names that start with J. (Jerry Jarboe referred to his job as “life and money management,” and said that he was out of the business.) “That’s deep,” Bonner said. “He’s seen things most 16- or 17-year-olds don’t see in a lifetime.” Jarboe’s mother, Sheila Dudley, who had two children by Jerry Jarboe and worked as a data processor, tried to shield him from his father’s life by keeping him busy with sports. He started playing football when he was 4 and soon was so good that opposing teams demanded to see his birth certificate. By his senior year in high school, he was named to the all-state first team. Gucci Mane watched one of his practices. Image Jarboe, right, speaking with Jake Hallum, a scout for the Eagles. Scouts were sent to Arkansas State to assess whether the trouble-prone Jarboe was worth the risk. Credit Lance Murphey for The New York Times Yet for most of that time, rap was Jarboe’s first love. He joined a group called Black Mobb, and local high school students downloaded its raps to their phones. On weekends, Black Mobb performed at clubs for teenagers and fought rival groups. Jarboe lost some teeth one night in a fight with Waka Flocka’s crew. That is how he wound up with a gold grill — “my golds,” he called them. Some patrons would hide guns in bushes and garbage cans around the parking lot before entering, then race to retrieve them as soon as they exited. (Jarboe said that he did not carry a gun, but that others in his group did.) “Winning the fight isn’t who wins,” he said. “It’s who gets out the door first.” One night, by the time Jarboe and his friends left a club, another group had lined up in the parking lot, guns aimed at the door. Somebody pushed Jarboe down just as a bullet grazed his neck. One reason he never cuts his dreads is to hide the burn mark. “I feel so lucky,” he said one afternoon in Atlanta, sitting in the parking lot of the now-deserted club. “There were so many shootouts. Lot of people died. “That was supposed to be me. Dead.” Days after Jarboe’s departure from Oklahoma, a parade of colleges promised to resurrect his football career. He chose Troy , a Division I program with a reputation for rehabilitating athletes. “We went on the word of the Oklahoma coaches who recruited him — they liked him,” said Neal Brown, then Troy’s offensive coordinator and now at Kentucky. “He was a risk for us. We had to take guys like that at Troy.” It did not work out. Jarboe sat out as a freshman — the year Oklahoma played in the title game — and with his red dreads and Atlanta swagger, he attracted the wrong kind of attention. Even during his rapping days, he had always been a good student and hard-working athlete, but at Troy he cut classes, skipped training, broke team rules. His sophomore season was uninspired. Off the field, the university police arrested him in January 2009 after an altercation with a former girlfriend in the cafeteria. The charge of misdemeanor harassment was dismissed. He was arrested again as a sophomore during an Alabama snowstorm when a campus security guard charged that Jarboe threw a snowball at him during a mass student snowball fight. The coaches had had enough. But they did not cut him loose until they found another place for him to play: Northeast Mississippi Community College . Within hours of Jarboe’s being booted from his third school in two years, as he toted everything he owned in a single bag, a graduate assistant drove him from Troy’s campus to a truck stop in Birmingham, Ala., where a coach from Northeast Mississippi picked him up. “He got in the car, and from that moment, I knew this kid realized this is rock bottom,” said Brad Boyette, the Northeast Mississippi assistant. “That was the point at which he rebounded and came back.” “Within 15 miles, tears started running down his face. He must’ve told me 10 times during that 195-mile trip: ‘Coach, I’m not going to let you down. Thank you for the opportunity.’ ” Jarboe’s memory: “It was like going to jail.” If Troy was Rehab U., this was the Mississippi School of Last Chances. “He was open about the mistakes he made; he wasn’t going to hide it,” said Patti Ann Webb, then the team trainer, who became what Jarboe described as a surrogate mother to him. “Not only did he feel like a failure, he was embarrassed. He knew he had to change. We were his only way out.” Jarboe flourished in the small-college, small-town (population 8,700) atmosphere. While many of his Atlanta friends were being jailed or shot, he would call Webb to brag that he had made honor roll. Image Jarboe played for Hugh Freeze, the “Blind Side” coach, at Arkansas State. Credit Craig Mitchelldyer/Getty Images On the field, playing Thursday nights in front of small but enthusiastic crowds against teams from community colleges like Coahoma and Itawamba, he finally showed the potential he never reached at Troy. “His talent is unreal,” said Coach Ricky Smither, comparing Jarboe to Julio Jones, whom he had coached in high school. Jarboe was tested more severely off the field. Boyette contended that the campus police singled him out, often baiting him to get a reaction. “They really put the heat on him,” Boyette said. “They wanted him off campus. They thought he was a threat. It goes back to the way the kid looks; he has a criminal look to him. But he’s the furthest thing from that.” Webb added: “They tried to antagonize him, and he rose above it. It’s when he grew up. Before, he would’ve reacted to those people’s actions.” Jarboe appeared ready for his last move. Major colleges, including Pittsburgh and Southern California, called but waited to make offers. Jarboe’s coaches called Freeze. Freeze had a reputation as a fair and compassionate coach from his days aiding a homeless Michael Oher in high school. But Arkansas State was Freeze’s first college head coaching job, and although he liked Jarboe’s talent, he did not know about his head. “My first response was, ‘I can’t do that,’ ” Freeze recalled. “ ‘I’m a new coach, and I’m not sure how that will go over.’ ” But Freeze met Jarboe in Mississippi. He drove there with an assistant and the university chancellor. Freeze said it was the most emotional recruiting interview he had ever conducted. “It was one of those moments in recruiting where you’re convinced after a kid looks at you and says, ‘Coach, please give me a chance to rewrite my story,’ ” Freeze said. “I grilled him pretty hard. It wasn’t me having to draw stuff out of him. He went through the whole story. He didn’t try to cover up.” Freeze added: “Thank God I took the time to hear his heart. I had the history of Michael Oher behind me, and they were so much alike. Sometimes you should take chances.” Fighting for a Future Pro day in Jonesboro wound down. Jarboe finished his sprints and slipped into the blue sweats he got in January at an all-star game in Montgomery, Ala., where scouts interviewed him continually. Some of those scouts now tugged at their jackets at Liberty Bank Stadium. They were a grizzled, gimlet-eyed bunch, but Jarboe was used to the scrutiny. “I been doing this all my life,” he said. “Every team I played for, I had to do it for them all over again. They’d say: ‘We heard about you. Can you do it?’ ” He was back in Atlanta the next day, spending most of it watching his sister, a sophomore at Clark Atlanta University, compete at an outdoor track meet. He sat in the stands for hours with his mother, his father and two of his high school coaches. “I told him you just got to recreate yourself,” said Dudley, who hates tattoos, hates rap, but loves her son. “I’m always going to be in his grill.” At the end of pro day, that grill gleamed even in the weak Delta light. “Yeah, I’ve surprised myself,” Jarboe said. “I’ve seen myself change into a good, sane-headed person. Someone who knows what the word future means. This is my last chance, and I know it. I do this right, it can turn me into what I need to be.” He added: “I know I can handle it. I been through so much.”

College football
Sports Drafts and Recruits
University of Oklahoma
Josh Jarboe
Arkansas State University


In New Austin, Accommodating the Broken Spoke Honkey-Tonk

Abstract: Old Austin clashes with New Austin nearly every day, causing much worry among the city’s natives: Will these new condos and luxury hotels rub out everything that makes their weird city great? Will the shows for hipster musicians dry up? Is $10 guacamole really worth it? The anguish is not new. A generation of Austinites has unsuccessfully battled against losing iconic institutions like the Armadillo World Headquarters , Liberty Lunch and Las Manitas — all razed to make way for New Austin. But one developer is trying to prove that the old and new can cohabit. For the last eight months, the developer, Transwestern , has been overhauling a seven-acre plot in South Austin. The area is a mess: bulldozers and excavators sit among tall piles of dirt and rock; 20-foot-high concrete piers jut out of the ground; and a jagged eight-foot trench is framed by hundreds of feet of orange-and-white highway barriers lining the road’s shoulder. At the center of this chaotic scene sits an old, squat red building, dwarfed by pipes and slabs, looking like the last proud holdout in a world gone mad. This is the Broken Spoke , and it is arguably the greatest honky-tonk of all time. The Spoke, which was built by James White in 1964, has hosted everyone from Bob Wills and Willie Nelson to an unknown George Strait. It attracts tourists from Japan and England and celebrities from Hollywood. They gawk and drink and dance at the most famous club in a city that bills itself as the Live Music Capital of the World. And now, Transwestern is trying to save it while surrounding it with its own version of New Austin, the 704. The $60 million complex (named after the area’s ZIP code, 78704) will have 385 apartments and 20,000 square feet of retail space in two five-story buildings flanking the Spoke. It will feature a fitness center, a yoga studio and a bocce court. Ty Puckett, Transwestern’s executive vice president of development, used to go to the Spoke when he attended the University of Texas. “I’ve been here 40 years and I’ve seen too many great spots that made Austin Austin get torn down,” he said. So he worked with the company to preserve it, giving Mr. White a 10-year lease (with renewal options), paying for valet parking to make up for the spaces lost to the construction, and even fixing up the old Texas Top Hands tour bus that has been outside the club since the 1970s. Transwestern also designed the 704 to fit the Spoke’s aesthetic. “We’re integrating design features, like vintage signs, to keep it rustic, keep the down-home South Austin feel,” Mr. Puckett said. “Our goal is to make the Spoke feel like an integrated part of the project.” Drivers on South Lamar Boulevard who look at the construction must think there is no way the Spoke can survive. Mr. White, 73, is not so sure. “We’re like the Alamo,” he said. “There are a lot of tall buildings around it, too, but when you open the door and go inside, you don’t see them — you say, ‘I’m in the Alamo.’ When you open the door here, you think, ‘I’m in the best honky-tonk in Texas.’ ” The Spoke has not changed much in 48 years. Patrons still eat chicken fried steak on gingham-covered tables and two-step on a concrete floor to performers like the Derailers and Dale Watson. The ceiling, which in places is so low that some men have to doff their cowboy hats, is patched together with warped tiles, particle board, plywood and corrugated metal. The stage’s art is a Texas flag and a mural of a cowboy singing to a horse. The waitresses look like characters from Tammy Wynette songs. “When you step on the floor, you’re part of something much bigger than just another night out two-stepping,” said Margaret Shaw, a regular. “I don’t know if he meant to, but Mr. White created something magical, almost spiritual. It’s like going to church.” Mr. White is there most nights, dressed in jeans and a cowboy shirt and hat, stamping hands and talking to people. He thanks them for coming — the crowd is smaller these days, about 50 to 100 fewer patrons than the 300 to 400 who generally showed up on weekends, because there are so few places to park. Mr. White is confident that if he can tough out the next seven months (the north apartments are set to take tenants in August), he will have a new clientele. But he has no intention of changing the place to fit the new development. The Spoke turns 50 next year, a few months after Mr. White turns 75, and when he is ready, he will hand it over to his daughters, and then their children. The Spoke, he said, is not going anywhere. “When I built the Spoke in 1964, it was surrounded by fields,” he said. “I worked 16 hours a day, and I never thought I wouldn’t make it. I figured, give the people cold beer, good food at reasonable prices and a good time — and you’re going to make it. “I feel the same today. I’m not leaving. I’m going to make it.”

Austin
Broken Spoke Austin Tex
Music
Commercial Real Estate


Canada: Terrorism Bill Unveiled

Abstract: The government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper introduced an anti-terrorism bill on Monday that was to have been brought before lawmakers last Wednesday — the day a gunman killed a soldier at a war memorial in Ottawa and then stormed the Parliament Buildings. Among other things, the bill explicitly approves the practice of sharing information about Canadian terrorist suspects gathered by foreign intelligence services with Canada’s spy agency and increases secrecy surrounding informants. Separately, Commissioner Robert Paulson of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said that the gunman, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, appeared “quite lucid and quite purposeful” in a video he recorded, but apparently did not distribute, before the attack.

Canada
Terrorism
Legislation
Michael Zehaf-Bibeau