Events on Long Island

Abstract: A guide to cultural and recreational goings-on in and around Nassau and Suffolk Counties this week. Items for the guide should be sent at least three weeks in advance to lical@nytimes.com , or by mail to Long Island Weekly, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018-1405. Comedy DIX HILLS Dix Hills Performing Arts Center An Evening of Comedy With Uncle Floyd. Aug. 14 at 7:30 p.m. Dix Hills Performing Arts Center, 305 North Service Road. (631) 656-2148; dhpac.org . WESTHAMPTON BEACH Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center Bill Cosby. Friday at 8:30 p.m. $120 to $180. Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center, 76 Main Street. (631) 288-1500; whbpac.org . Film EAST HAMPTON Guild Hall “Night of the Living Dead.” Aug. 14 at 8 p.m. $8 and $10. Guild Hall, 158 Main Street. (631) 324-4050; guildhall.org . HUNTINGTON Cinema Arts Center “The Kids Are All Right,” by Lisa Cholodenko. Through Thursday. $4.50 to $10. “Cheech and Chong’s Nice Dreams.” Wednesday at 7 and 8:35 p.m. $4.50 to $10. Cinema Arts Center, 423 Park Avenue. cinemaartscentre.org ; (800) 838-3006. WESTHAMPTON BEACH Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center “Let it Rain,” directed by Agnes Jaoui. Tuesday through Thursday at 8 p.m. $3 to $10. Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center, 76 Main Street. (631) 288-1500; whbpac.org. For Children COLD SPRING HARBOR Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum “Monday Minnows,” interactive crafts and fun stories. Ages 3 to 5. Through Aug. 23. $4. Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum, 301 Main Street. (631) 367-3418; cshwhalingmuseum.org . EAST HAMPTON Guild Hall “Ralph’s World in Concert,” with Ralph Covert, indie rocker, songwriter, playwright, and children’s book author. Wednesday at 5 p.m. $12 to $20. Guild Hall, 158 Main Street. (631) 324-4050; guildhall.org. GARDEN CITY Long Island Children’s Museum “Night Journeys: An Adventure in the World of Sleep and Dreams,” an exhibition that takes a journey through the world of bedtime rituals and routines and into the nighttime experience of sleep and dreams. Through Sept. 12. Long Island Children’s Museum, 11 Davis Avenue. (516) 224-5800; licm.org . RIVERHEAD Atlantis Marine World “Gator Invasion,” a nearly 900-square-foot exhibition featuring five six-foot-long American alligators, along with several two-foot-long baby American alligators and one crocodile, obtained from Gatorama. Through Sept. 5. Atlantis Marine World, 431 East Main Street. atlantismarineworld.com ; (631) 208-9200. RIVERHEAD Long Island Science Center “Toy Tech,” a hands-on exhibition that explores how toys work. Through Aug. 29. $8. Wednesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Long Island Science Center, 11 West Main Street. (631) 208-8000; lisciencecenter.org . Music and Dance BAY SHORE Boulton Center for the Performing Arts The Original Wailers, with Al Anderson and Junior Marvin, reggae. Thursday at 8 p.m. $45 and $50. Sunrise Skyline, rock. Aug. 14 at 7 p.m. $12. Boulton Center for the Performing Arts, 37 West Main Street. (631) 969-1101; boultoncenter.org . DIX HILLS Dix Hills Performing Arts Center “Sounds of Swing and Sinatra,” featuring New York’s Most Dangerous Big Band. Aug. 8 at 2 p.m. $25. “Celebrating Santana,” with the Milagro Tribute Band. Friday at 7:30 p.m. $25. Dix Hills Performing Arts Center, 305 North Service Road. (631) 656-2148; dhpac.org. EAST HAMPTON Guild Hall Klea Blackhurst and Billy Stritch in “Dreaming of a Song — The Music of Hoagy Carmichael.” Aug. 8 at 7:30 p.m. $33 to $45. Guild Hall, 158 Main Street. (631) 324-4050; guildhall.org. EAST MEADOW Eisenhower Park Armenian-American Night, featuring Zareh Kasbarian and his band, Yeraz Dance Ensemble, soprano Ruthann Turekian and actress Nora Armani. Aug. 15, 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. Free. Eisenhower Park, Merrick and Stewart Avenues. (516) 572-0218; www.nassaucountyny.gov . FARMINGVILLE Brookhaven Amphitheater Arts and Cultural Center “Music Under the Stars.” Join the Long Island Philharmonic and its music director, David Stewart Wiley, as they perform works by Mozart, Bizet, Rossini and Sousa. Aug. 15 at 7:30 p.m. Free. Brookhaven Amphitheater Arts and Cultural Center, at Bald Hill. brookhavenamphitheater.com ; (631) 451-8010. GLEN COVE Glen Cove Village Square Cynthia Scott, singer. Friday at 7:30 p.m. Free. Ian Petillo, jazz and standards. Aug. 14 at 11:40 p.m. Free. Glen Cove Village Square, at the corner of Glen and School Streets. downtownsoundslive.org . GREAT RIVER Bayard Cutting Arboretum State Park Little Brass Band, American concert band. Aug. 8 at 2 p.m. Free. Ahmad Ali and Friends, performing classics from Sinatra, Motown, blues, smooth jazz and pop classics. Aug. 15 at 2 p.m. Free. Bayard Cutting Arboretum State Park, 440 Montauk Highway. (631) 581-1002; nysparks.com . HUNTINGTON Chapin Rainbow Stage, Heckscher Park “Music Under the Stars.” The Long Island Philharmonic, directed by David Stewart Wiley, performs works by Mozart, Bizet, Rossini and Sousa. Aug. 14 at 8:30 p.m. Free. Chapin Rainbow Stage, Heckscher Park, Prime Avenue and Route 25A. (631) 271-8423 extension 5; huntingtonarts.org . HUNTINGTON Cinema Arts Center “The Gold Rush,” classic black-and-white film featuring Charles Chaplin. Through Aug. 8. $4.50 to $10. “An Evening of Classical Guitar,” with Jonathan Bodian, Rene Izquierdo and Elina Chekan. Wednesday at 8 p.m. $10 and $15. Cinema Arts Center, 423 Park Avenue. cinemaartscentre.org; (800) 838-3006. SOUTHAMPTON Southampton Cultural Center “Music From the Heart,” with Jessica Tortorice and Peter Ludlow. Aug. 14 at 7:30 p.m. $8 and $15. “Summer Roses: Classical and Romantic Music for Voice and Violin,” recital by Junko Ohtsu, violinist, and Sarah Moulton, soprano. Aug. 15 at 3 p.m. $15 and $20. Southampton Cultural Center, 25 Pond Lane. (631) 287-4377; southamptonculturalcenter.org . WESTHAMPTON BEACH Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center Lyle Lovett and his Large Band, bluegrass/jazz. Aug. 14 at 8:30 p.m. $125 to $200. The Jazz Crusaders, featuring Joe Sample, Wilton Felder and Wayne Henderson. Aug. 15 at 8:30 p.m. $75 to $125. Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center, 76 Main Street. whbpac.org; (631) 288-1500. Theater EAST FARMINGDALE Arena Players Main Stage Theater “Ancient History,” comedy by David Ives. Through Aug. 8. $20 and $25. Arena Players Main Stage Theater, 296 Route 109. (516) 293-0674; arenaplayers.org . EAST FARMINGDALE Arena Players Second Stage Theater “Any Friend of Percy D’Angelino Is a Friend of Mine,” comedy by Jason Milligan. Through Aug. 29. $20 and $25. Arena Players Second Stage Theater, 296 Route 109. (516) 293-0674; arenaplayers.org. EAST ISLIP BayWay Arts Center “All My Sons,” by Arthur Miller. Aug. 14 through Aug. 19. $14 to $20. BayWay Arts Center, 265 East Main Street. broadhollow.org ; (631) 581-2700. ELMONT BroadHollow Theater “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” with music by Gene de Paul, Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn. Through Aug. 22. $14 to $28. BroadHollow Theater, 700 Hempstead Turnpike. broadhollow.org; (516) 775-4420. LINDENHURST Studio Theater “The Glass Menagerie,” by Tennessee Williams. Through Aug. 21. $14 to $20. Studio Theater, 141 South Wellwood Avenue. (631) 226-8400; studiotheatreli.com . MERRICK The Stage Theater “The Spelling Bee,” musical. Aug. 14 through Sept. 12. The Stage Theater, 2222 Hewlett Avenue. thestageinmerrick.com ; (516) 868-6400. PORT JEFFERSON Theater Three “Rent,” musical, with music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson. Through Aug. 14. $14 to $21. Theater Three, 412 Main Street. (631) 928-9100; theaterthree.com . PORT WASHINGTON Jeanne Rimsky Theater “Menopause the Musical.” Through Aug. 29. $47.50. Jeanne Rimsky Theater, 232 Main Street. (516) 717-3990; menopauselongisland.com . SAG HARBOR Bay Street Theater “Romance,” comedy by David Mamet. Through Sept. 5. $55 and $65. Bay Street Theater, Main and Bay Streets. (631) 725-9500; baystreet.org . SOUTHAMPTON Southampton Cultural Center “Cabaret,” musical, with music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. Through Aug. 8. $12 to $35. Southampton Cultural Center, 25 Pond Lane. (631) 287-4377; southamptonculturalcenter.org. Museums and Galleries COLD SPRING HARBOR Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum “Tales and Treasure: From the Attic and Archive,” artifacts from the 1800s. Through Sept. 6. $5 and $6; members and children under 5, free. Mondays through Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum, 279 Main Street. (631) 367-3418; cshwhalingmuseum.org. DIX HILLS Jeanie Tengelsen Gallery “Inside and Out: The Landscapes and Interiors of William Starkweather,” an exhibition featuring 35 watercolor and oil paintings. Through Aug. 15. Jeanie Tengelsen Gallery, 107 East Deer Park Road. (631) 462-5400; artleagueli.org . EAST HAMPTON Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center “Jackson and Lee, August 1953: Photographs by Tony Vaccaro.” Through Oct. 30. $10; members, children under 12 and CUNY/SUNY students, free. Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, 830 Springs-Fireplace Road. naples.cc.sunysb.edu/CAS/pkhouse.nsf ; (631) 324-4929 EAST ISLIP Islip Art Museum “All in the Family,” annual open call and invitational exhibition. Through Sept. 5. Suggested donation, $3. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 4 p.m. Islip Art Museum, 50 Irish Lane. islipartmuseum.org ; (631) 224-5402. HUNTINGTON Heckscher Museum of Art “Long Island Biennial,” a juried exhibition featuring 44 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and photographs by professional artists living on Long Island. Through Sept. 26. “Metropolis: Traveling the World,” 30 images of some of the world’s major cities. Through Sept. 19. $4 to $6; children under 10, free. Wednesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Heckscher Museum of Art, 2 Prime Avenue. heckscher.org ; (631) 351-3250. QUOGUE Quogue Library Art Gallery Minimal abstract sculpture, by Avital Oz. Through Aug. 30. Mondays, noon to 5 p.m.; Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Quogue Library Art Gallery, 90 Quogue Street. (631) 653-4224. www.suffolk.lib.ny.us/libraries/quog/index.html . RIVERHEAD Art Sites “Bird Shift,” works of eco-artists Brian D. Collier, Lianne Edwards, Hope Sandrow and Tonito Valderrama explore our culture, its impact on nature, and nature’s resilience through birds. Through Aug. 22. Thursdays through Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Art Sites, 651 West Main Street. (631) 591-2401; artsitesgallery.com . RIVERHEAD Suffolk County Historical Society “Helen M. Kroeger and Otto J. Kurth: The Anchorage Studio and Peconic Bay Impressionism,” a new art exhibition about the artists and their relationship with the North Fork art community. Through Oct. 30. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. Suffolk County Historical Society, 300 West Main Street. suffolkcountyhistoricalsociety.org ; (631) 727-2881. ROSLYN HARBOR Nassau County Museum of Art “Currents,” exhibition featuring the works of Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Benjamin Edwards and Tom Sanford. Through Sept. 12. “The Sea Around Us,” an exhibition that examines the romantic fascination some artists have for water. Through Sept. 12. $4 to $10; children under 5 and members, free. Tuesdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Nassau County Museum of Art, 1 Museum Drive. (516) 484-9337; nassaumuseum.org . ST. JAMES Mills Pond House Gallery “Arte Latino II,” art exhibition and festival celebrating Latin culture through art, dance and music. Aug. 14 through Sept. 30. Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 4 p.m. Mills Pond House Gallery, 660 Route 25A. stacarts.org ; (631) 862-6575. SOUTHAMPTON Parrish Art Museum “Rackstraw Downes: Onsite Paintings, 1972-2008,” an exhibition featuring American urban scenes and landscapes. Through Aug. 8. “Underground Pop,” an exhibition that embraces the quirky, personal and idiosyncratic visions of art in the digital phase of the information age. Aug. 15 through Oct. 3. Mondays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays 1 to 5 p.m. Parrish Art Museum, 25 Job’s Lane. (631) 283-2118; parrishart.org . SOUTHAMPTON Southampton Cultural Center “Gestures X 4,” an exhibition featuring works by Josh Dayton, Carol Hunt, Fulvio Massi and Hans Van de Bovenkamp. Through Aug. 25. Southampton Cultural Center, 25 Pond Lane. southamptonculturalcenter.org; (631) 287-4377. WESTHAMPTON BEACH Galerie BelAge “The Fifth Annual Outsider Art in the Hamptons,” featuring works in oils, acrylics, sculpture, photography and video, with musical, dance and poetry performances. Through Sept. 30. Galerie BelAge, 8 Moniebogue Lane. (631) 288-5082; galeriebelage.com .


N.B.A. This Week: All-Star Starters, Spurs-Raptors, Rozier’s Shot

Abstract: The starters are locked in . In New Orleans on Feb. 19, the first All-Stars from the East to take the floor will be DeMar DeRozan, Kyrie Irving, LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jimmy Butler. They will face a Western conference starting lineup of Kawhi Leonard, Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Anthony Davis and James Harden. The reserves, who are selected by the N.B.A.’s coaches, will be announced on Thursday at 7 p.m. Notable snubs from the starting lineups, including the triple-double-averaging Russell Westbrook and the Eastern conference’s scoring leader, Isaiah Thomas, will almost definitely be among them. The distinction between starter and reserve in the All-Star Game does not matter much when evaluating players’ careers. But a player who starts is significantly more likely to be voted the game’s most valuable player. Of the more than 60 players who have won the honor dating to 1951, only 13 have come off the bench. Since 2000, only two reserves have ended up with the M.V.P. Award. Shaquille O’Neal scored 24 points and grabbed 11 rebounds on his way to the award in 2004, and returned in 2009 to share the trophy with Kobe Bryant. In 2015, Westbrook came off the bench to take the honor. He won it again in 2016 after starting in Toronto, and joined Bob Pettit (1958 and 1959) as the only N.B.A. players to win consecutive All-Star Game M.V.P. Awards. He has a chance to become the first to win three straight. But I bet that some hungrier All-Star will keep him from the record. My money’s on this guy: Let’s get into some games. Game of the Week San Antonio at Toronto, Tuesday, 7 p.m., NBA TV Kawhi Leonard has taken on Tim Duncan’s mantle — and he may have borrowed his predecessor’s invisibility cloak as well. How else do you explain a lack of conversation about the team with the second-best record in the league? For those who have argued that the 34-9 San Antonio Spurs are steady but unspectacular, Saturday should have served as a riposte. Without Tony Parker and Pau Gasol, the Spurs held off the Cavaliers in overtime, 118-115. Leonard, who had a career high with 41 points on Saturday, has scored 30 points or more in six consecutive games. He is the first Spurs player to put together such a streak since the 1980s. And in the absence of Parker and Gasol, other capable Spurs shouldered the scoring load, as they always seem to do. You may not have heard of Dejounte Murray , the rookie guard starting in Parker’s place. But there he was on Saturday, scoring 14 points on 7-of-10 shooting. On Thursday, he scored 24 against Denver, shooting 60 percent from behind the 3-point line. And you remember David Lee, the former star turned mercenary forward? He had 14 points in Cleveland on Saturday, and 10 against the Nuggets. The Spurs’ offense is superb, scoring the fourth most points per possession in the N.B.A. Their defense is even better. Their Western rivals in Oakland and Houston may score more points and make more noise. But the Spurs remain deadly. San Antonio is 1-0 against the Warriors this season. The teams do not meet again until March. The Spurs are 2-1 against the Rockets. And this month, in their first game against their Eastern conference counterparts, the perennially second-seeded Toronto Raptors, they won by 28 points. Expect a better game on Tuesday on the Raptors’ home court, where Toronto is 15-7 this season. The Raptors had played well there in January before a recent slide, beating the Jazz and the Celtics, and losing a close one to Houston. But with the Raptors, the question isn’t whether they are capable of beating other second-tier teams, but what they have to do to climb into the first tier. Tuesday’s game should suggest an answer. If Leonard stays hot, Toronto’s front line is unlikely to have an answer for guarding him. Mustafa Noor at the Raptors Rapture website has argued that the team should trade for a sturdier power forward than Patrick Patterson, recommending Serge Ibaka, Paul Millsap or Nikola Mirotic. Toronto fans should almost hope that the Spurs embarrass the Raps again. Another loss might just prompt Masai Ujiri , Toronto’s team president, to get a move on some trade talks. Three Others to Watch Houston at Philadelphia, Friday, 8 p.m., ESPN There’s no denying that Allen Iverson’s old club is playing some of the most exciting basketball it has since it lost the Answer. Philadelphia has won six of its last eight games. The Sixers’ play prompted the league to schedule them for Friday’s impromptu national appearance . Los Angeles Clippers at Golden State, Saturday, 8:30 p.m., ABC What should have been the game of the week will instead be an opportunity to reflect on the Clippers’ bad luck. Chris Paul is injured (again). As of Saturday, Blake Griffin had yet to recover from his own injury. In last season’s playoffs, the Clippers lost four consecutive games to the Blazers after losing those two stars in the second round. They are 2-7 playing without them this season. League Pass Game of the Week: Washington at Atlanta, Friday, 8 p.m. The Wizards, currently fifth in the Eastern Conference, have won 13 consecutive home games, but they still haven’t shown they can consistently win on the road. After giving up a big lead in New York on Thursday, almost giving a game away to the Knicks, they lost by a point in Detroit on Saturday. They’ll get another chance this week, against Atlanta, which is fourth in the conference, but it will be a tough game: The Hawks are 8-2 in their last 10. Not Expecting the Unexpected In a close game between the Celtics and the Blazers on Saturday, Portland was convinced that Thomas would be taking the last shot. So they were woefully underprepared when Thomas’s backup, Terry Rozier, sent the game into overtime. Rozier, a second-year player out of Louisville, has recently contributed more. But over all, he is averaging 5.8 points in 18 minutes a game this season. On Saturday, he became one of several lesser-known players to make a big bucket this month. Seth Curry has worked his way into the starting lineup in Dallas, where, on Friday, he made a 3-pointer near the end of regulation that sent the game into overtime. He had 15 points in the game, which his team, like Rozier’s, ended up losing. Also this month, Tim Hardaway Jr. capped a career-high 29-point performance by sending a game into overtime with a 3. His Hawks ended up beating the Spurs , 114-112. Hitting clutch shots is tough. The ability to do so can be a good indication that a player is on the rise. Seth’s older brother, the reigning league most valuable player, Stephen Curry, is one of many players who is “less clutch” than his reputation might suggest. When ESPN put together some helpful statistics on clutch shooting in March , it found that in 19 attempts to tie or win a game in the final five seconds of regulation or overtime, big brother had made only six shots. So great job, Seth (and Tim and Terry). You’ve struck a blow for little brothers (and All-Star sons and backup point guards) everywhere. Mark Cuban approves.


Baltimore Ravens at New England Patriots: Saturday’s A.F.C. Divisional-Round Matchup

Abstract: Ravens at Patriots 4:35 p.m., Line: Patriots by 7 Something about the playoffs brings out the best in Joe Flacco. Fans may mock him regularly for labeling himself as an elite quarterback, but it is easy to make the case that he has been just that in the postseason. Flacco has won a record seven postseason games on the road, and over his last seven playoff games he has thrown for 17 touchdowns with one interception. After winning on the road again last Saturday, Coach John Harbaugh called him the best quarterback in football. “It obviously means a lot for a head coach to stand up in front of everybody in the whole world and say those kind of things,” Flacco said. “Whether it really means anything, I don’t know. But it definitely means a lot to me.” The weather will be colder for this game than for any other one the Ravens have played this season, and New England is historically tough to beat at home, but betting against Flacco in the playoffs is starting to become a fool’s errand. Pick : Ravens


A Power in Emeryville Slides Quickly, Politically and Personally

Abstract: Four years ago, Ken Bukowski, the five-time mayor of Emeryville, refinanced his house to buy new teeth. The transaction hastened his downfall. Mr. Bukowski has served on the City Council since 1987, helping to spur a development boom that turned his tiny East Bay city into a center for retail giants like Ikea and Best Buy, and the home to innovative companies like Novartis and Pixar. But Mr. Bukowski, who admitted in an interview this week that he was once a methamphetamine user, fell behind on his mortgage after refinancing. He borrowed money from developers, some of whom did business with the city. This year, he lost the house to an Emeryville businessman who had lent him $50,000. Broke and embittered, Mr. Bukowski, 59, now says his penury is driving him out of politics. “What am I getting out of this?” he said this week at his former home, where he continues to live, rent-free, in a compound strewn with broken doors, tubs and other debris. “I’m not a property owner anymore. I’m not getting anything out of this.” If, as he suggests, Mr. Bukowski decides not to run for re-election next year, it will be the end of one of the Bay Area’s more colorful political sagas. A former nightclub impresario, Mr. Bukowski entered public office more than two decades ago to reform Emeryville’s government. He is widely described as a bright and dedicated public servant brought low by personal demons that left him destitute. Mr. Bukowski’s legacy can be seen in the Emeryville skyline, composed of the hotels, restaurants and megastores in and around the sprawling Bay Street mall. The city has just 10,000 residents, but its commercial success and the tax revenue that comes with it have made Emeryville the envy of struggling municipalities throughout the Bay Area. But Mr. Bukowski’s anticipated departure also symbolizes a political shift. The unrestrained development that he encouraged has brought a backlash from residents who say they want to make Emeryville more livable. Tracy Schroth, a resident who is part of that movement, has written about Mr. Bukowski’s personal struggles in her blog, The Secret News. Like many other residents, she expressed sympathy over his conduct. “Do I wish him ill? No,” Ms. Schroth said. “But do I want him running my city? No.” Mr. Bukowski, who grew up in Brooklyn, made a splashy entrance into Emeryville in his 20s. He opened Silk’s, a club that catered to blacks. On Saturday nights, 2,000 people would jam the club to hear acts like Rick James and MC Hammer. Mr. Bukowski said he was making $2,000 a week. He owned a plane that ferried him to a second home in Las Vegas. In the mid-1980s, he helped found the Emeryville Chamber of Commerce. A Democrat, he ran for City Council on a reform ticket, determined to transform a polluted, declining industrial city. “The idea was that it was time for Emeryville to graduate,” said Greg Harper, a lawyer who ran with Mr. Bukowski, “to get away from being a city that was based on dying heavy industry and legacy powers that didn’t deserve to be calling the shots.” Mr. Bukowski helped shape Emeryville’s business-friendly attitude, marrying the city’s strategic location — 1.2 square miles tucked between Oakland and Berkeley near the Bay Bridge — to policies encouraging development. As Emeryville began to grow, however, colleagues began to notice that his physical appearance deteriorated. “He was strange; he would go to meetings and smell like a bum,” said Francis Collins, one of the developers who lent Mr. Bukowski money. “He’s an odd character, but he’s honest and he loves Emeryville.” In the past, Mr. Bukowski has denied using methamphetamine or said he had tried it only once. In the interview this week, he said, “I’ve used it, but I’m not strung out.” He denied that he currently used drugs. “When you don’t have the money...” he said, his voice trailing off. Mr. Bukowski said he never conducted city business after using methamphetamine. But he said the drug had helped him come up with good ideas, including one to force insurance companies to pay for the cost of putting out fires. The idea has not been put into effect. “It’s an amplified euphoria,” Mr. Bukowski said. “Any drug depends on the individual; it depends on the way you think. My mind gets very creative.” Before the 2007 election, friends urged Mr. Bukowski to fix his teeth. Mr. Bukowski said he refinanced his house in part to raise approximately $10,000 to have his teeth pulled and dentures made. The state’s Fair Political Practices Commission later fined him $15,500 for using campaign money to help pay down the mortgage in 2003 and 2004. His finances worsening, Mr. Bukowski approached businesspeople, friends and residents for money. Ken Schmier, a lawyer, lent him $50,000, according to Mr. Schmier and public records. Mr. Collins, who is in negotiations to sell property to the city, lent him $35,000, according to Mr. Collins and public records. Mr. Bukowski also took on a consulting contract with Paxio, a fiber-optic company that also had business with the city. Last year the City Council censured Mr. Bukowski for what it considered unethical conduct including not disclosing his contract with Paxio. Emeryville police also probed allegations that Mr. Bukowski took other loans and gifts that he didn’t report. The investigation found that other residents had loaned him money and bought him clothes, said police chief Ken James, but no charges were filed. Mr. Bukowski — who properly recused himself from the property negotiations according to city officials — says he did nothing wrong and was motivated only by financial need. But the loans and Mr. Bukowski’s precarious financial situation have made some residents uneasy. Shirley Enomoto, who has lived in Emeryville for 14 years and is active in civic affairs, said she always liked Mr. Bukowski. “Ken is one of the few people on the Council who will respond to my e-mails and complaints and really try to do something about it,” she said. But Ms. Enomoto added: “It’s a problem when he goes to constituents for loans and doesn’t pay them back. It’s a problem if he’s voting and panders to businesses and you wonder, ‘Is he getting paid for his votes?’ ” Mr. Bukowski said he was surviving on his City Council salary — $1,100 a month, plus benefits. He has told people that if he can find another job, he will not run again, but he has also said that if people encourage him to run, he might. Mr. Bukowski said he applied for a job with the Association of Bay Area Governments but was turned down. He sought work as a bus driver for the Emery Go Round, the city’s free shuttle, despite hitting and killing a security guard with his car in 2007 while driving from a meeting. The police said they did not have probable cause to test him for drugs or alcohol. The city settled a wrongful-death suit, but Mr. Bukowski was not charged. Mr. Bukowski said he was confident that he would ultimately pay his debts. “I will pay them. I think I will have the wherewithal,” he said. “Something’s going to happen, something positive. I just have so many good ideas.”

Bukowski Ken
Emeryville (Calif)
City Councils
Mayors
Drug Abuse and Traffic
San Francisco Bay Area (Calif)


The Last Rites for Death by Audio

Abstract: As eulogies go, the final showcase at Death by Audio, a D.I.Y. Williamsburg club, was a kicker, loud and sweaty and appropriately raucous. Smelly, too. For seven years, the space hosted thousands of indie bands, becoming a launching pad for punks, noise acts, experimental electronica and underground rap, and a clubhouse for every self-respecting music obsessive in between. The programming for its last week of shows this month was a closely guarded secret, yet fans turned up in droves, waiting hours each night for one more chance to stomp the checkerboard floor, dive off the beaten-up stage and guzzle cheap beer in the back room. David Burgos, 23, a D.J. for an Internet radio station, said he “took off work a month ago” to come on closing night. He got in line at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday and just managed to squeak in, four hours later, to hear familiar groups like Jeff the Brotherhood and Lightning Bolt play suddenly sentimental sets. The end of D.B.A., as it’s known, along with that of its neighboring venue Glasslands — Vice, the media conglomerate, is taking over the building — was met with hand-wringing but also weary resignation. As the neighborhood around it was transformed from abandoned lots to high-rise condos, it was only a matter of time until a small, semi-underground, all-ages club, which steadfastly kept ticket prices low, disappeared. Copies of Vice magazine were shredded in commemoration. “Every show here is magical,” said Theresa Rieck, 27, a bartender, sitting alone in an empty room and reminiscing. “You meet such good people and get so sweaty. I’ve got bruises all over my legs — I’ve been here three other nights.” Edan Wilber, a founder of D.B.A., wore a homemade T-shirt that declared, in part, “Start Your Own Showspace.” In the wee hours, he crowd-surfed along to the last-ever guitar peals in his club. “D.I.Y. is never permanent,” Ms. Rieck said. “This place will be reborn, somewhere else.”

Photography
Death by Audio
Williamsburg Brooklyn
Music
bars,nightclubs
Urban Planning
Vice Magazine


Former Net Tate George Charged in Ponzi Scheme

Abstract: Tate George, the former N.B.A. player and the chief executive of a real estate development firm, surrendered Friday to federal authorities and will face charges that prosecutors say are related to running a Ponzi scheme . Prosecutors said his company , the George Group, had “virtually no income generating operations.” George, 43, of Newark, was indicted on one count of wire fraud. The complaint said George collected more than $2 million from investors from 2005 to March of this year, and deposited it in the firm’s bank account and a personal account. Rather than financing real estate projects, the complaint said, George used some of the money to pay existing investors and to pay for home-improvement projects, meals at restaurants, clothing and gas. If convicted, George faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. George, a first-round draft choice who spent three seasons with the Nets and played three games for the Milwaukee Bucks, is probably best known for his college exploits at Connecticut. In 1990 he made one of the most memorable baskets in N.C.A.A. tournament history, catching a length-of-the-court inbounds pass with one second left and swishing a 15-footer to give the Huskies a 71-70 victory over Clemson in the Round of 16. (NYT)

New Jersey Nets
Basketball
Ponzi Schemes
George Tate C


Kenneth A. Schechter, 83, Dies; With Help, He Flew Blind

Abstract: “On the ninth of my planned 15 bomb runs, at 1,200 feet, an enemy antiaircraft shell exploded in the cockpit. Instinctively, I pulled back on the stick to gain altitude. Then I passed out. When I came to a short time later, I couldn’t see a thing. There was stinging agony in my face and throbbing in my head. I felt for my upper lip. It was almost severed from the rest of my face. I called out over the radio through my lip mike (which miraculously still worked), ‘I’m blind! For God’s sake, help me! I’m blind!’ ” The writer of those words, Kenneth A. Schechter, who died on Dec. 11 at 83, was no novelist. A graduate of Stanford and Harvard Business School, he spent most of his professional life as an insurance agent. But on March 22, 1952, as a Navy pilot over Wongsang-ni, North Korea, Mr. Schechter, then Ensign Schechter, was at the heart of an astonishing real-life thriller, one of the most electrifying air rescues in American military history. Mr. Schechter, then 22, was already an experienced battle pilot; his fateful mission was his 27th over Korea. Stationed on the aircraft carrier Valley Forge in the Sea of Japan, he was a member of Fighter Squadron 194, known as the Yellow Devils, and his targets that day were standard ones: railroad tracks, marshaling yards and other enemy transportation structures. He was flying a single-seat attack plane known as the A-1 Skyraider. In an essay that appeared nearly 50 years later in the book “Chicken Soup for the Veteran’s Soul” and subsequently in Naval Aviation News, Mr. Schechter recounted the events that allowed him to live. When the antiaircraft shell ripped into the cockpit, blowing away the canopy, and he pulled the plane into a climb, he was headed for a cloud bank at 10,000 feet that would have obscured him from view of his squadron mates and was probably the gateway to oblivion. Blood was flowing over his damaged eyes and nauseatingly into his throat, his head wounds were throbbing, and with the canopy gone, the noise from the engine and the 200-mile-per-hour airstream was earsplitting. But his scream through the microphone caught the attention of a fellow pilot, Lt. Howard Thayer, coincidentally his roommate on the Valley Forge, who spotted him above and gave the order: “Put your nose down! Put your nose down! Push over. I’m coming up.” What followed was a high-tension, high-altitude partnership in which Lieutenant Thayer settled his plane alongside Mr. Schechter’s — he would later say that the ensign’s head was such a bloody mess, he was amazed the man was still alive — and directed him, an aerial guide dog, with vocal commands back over the battle front and into friendly territory. Lieutenant Thayer’s first instinct was to have Ensign Schechter eject as soon as possible over the water, but the ensign refused; other pilots had not survived after bailing out into the frigid Sea of Japan, and without his sight — and with a parachute harness likely to be tangled — Ensign Schechter, who was fading in and out of consciousness, thought that this was a sure path to death. He mustered the gumption to refuse. The men continued on. They headed for a Marine airfield known as K-18, about 30 miles away. “I continued to follow Thayer’s directions, but he could see that my head kept flopping down from time to time and he doubted I could make it to K-18, so he decided to get me down right away,” Mr. Schechter wrote. When Lieutenant Thayer spotted a deserted dirt airstrip not far beyond the battle line, he decided to set his friend down there. The ruggedness and brevity of the strip would make it dangerous to use landing gear, Mr. Schechter wrote, so he had to make a belly landing. (A brief account at the time by The Associated Press said Ensign Schechter did not use his landing gear because in his blindness he could not locate the controls.) Down went the two planes. “From his plane, flying 25 feet away from mine and duplicating my maneuvers, Howard’s voice was cool and confident,” Mr. Schechter later wrote. Reported accounts of the rescue differ slightly, but according to Mr. Schechter’s, this is what he heard in his earpiece: “We’re heading straight. Flaps down. Hundred yards to the runway. You’re 50 feet off the ground. Pull back a little. Easy. Easy. That’s good. You’re level. You’re O.K. You’re O.K. Thirty feet off the ground. You’re O.K. You’re over the runway. Twenty feet. Kill it a little. You’re setting down. O.K. O.K. O.K. Cut!” And then, shortly thereafter, ebulliently: “You’re on the ground, Ken.” It was, Mr. Schechter wrote, “a perfect landing.” “No fire. No pain. No strain. The best landing I ever made.” Kenneth Allen Schechter was born in Harlem on Jan. 31, 1930, and lived the first few years of his life on the Upper West Side, after which his father, George, who worked with his brothers in a textile business, moved the family to Los Angeles. George Schechter later divorced Kenneth’s mother, the former Marjorie Kovner, and married Thelma Mann. Young Ken went to Los Angeles public schools and to the University of California, Los Angeles, in the Naval Officer Training Program before entering the Navy. Mr. Schechter died in Fairfield, Calif. His son, George, who goes by his middle name, Robert, said the cause was complications of prostate cancer. Mr. Schechter is also survived by his wife, the former Sue Finch, whom he married in 1955; another son, Jonathan; a daughter, Anne Buckley; and seven grandchildren. After landing his plane, Ensign Schechter was taken to a Navy hospital ship. Shrapnel had severely wounded his face, scalp and right eye; his left eye was also damaged. He regained his sight in the left eye but not in the right. The events of March 22, 1952, were briefly reported before the end of the month by The Associated Press and recounted more substantially several months later in an article by Cmdr. Harry A. Burns, a Naval officer, in The Saturday Evening Post. That article and another magazine account of Navy fliers in Korea written by James Michener were used as the basis of a 1954 Hollywood film, “Men of the Fighting Lady,” which starred Van Johnson as Lieutenant Thayer and Dewey Martin as Ensign Schechter. Howard Thayer, who made the Navy his career, was killed in 1961 when, on a night mission, he flew into the water returning to a carrier in the Mediterranean Sea. In 1995, Mr. Schechter was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. During his acceptance speech, he addressed Mr. Thayer’s three children, by then adults. “I hope you will see this ceremony as your ceremony,” Mr. Schechter said, “because that’s certainly the way I feel about it.” Fourteen years later, in 2009, Mr. Thayer received the award himself, posthumously.

Kenneth A Schechter
Howard Thayer
Korean War
US Military
Obituary
Pilots


Joking, but Also Jabbing, at Yankee Bond Hearing

Abstract: No fists were thrown, so Day 2 of the chest-puffing, name-calling contest between a corporate-welfare-assailing state assemblyman and officials of the richest team in baseball never quite degenerated into the kind of circus that might have captured the spotlight on a day when other news was far more compelling. But at a noisy hearing of the city’s Industrial Development Agency Thursday on the Yankees’ request for more than $370 million in additional tax-exempt bonds to pay for its new Bronx ballpark — or, more precisely, for cost overruns and goodies added since a 2006 bond issuance — other critics at least got a chance to vent, while beneficiaries of the project and the Yankees’ charity made sure to put in a good word for the boss. “An appalling use of public money,” said Joan Byron of the Pratt Center for Community Development, an architect who advocates for the “equitable distribution of environmental benefits and burdens” across city neighborhoods, according to the center’s Web site. Equity, though, is a subjective thing. Vinny Rivera, who said his group, Positive Workforce, lobbies for minority jobs in the construction industry and has placed about 70 people at the stadium, said he was on the Yankees’ team because on game days the stadium is a beehive of business. “Everybody makes money,” he said. “Everybody eats.” At a hearing he organized on Wednesday, the assemblyman, Richard L. Brodsky of Westchester, the harshest and loudest critic of the Yankee Stadium deal, jokingly challenged Randy Levine, the team’s president, and Seth W. Pinsky, president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, to a “civil, in-your-face fistfight.” On Thursday, as Mr. Brodsky, now on someone else’s turf, approached a lectern, Mr. Pinsky goaded him good-naturedly: “Would you like me to call my bodyguards, or are we going to refrain?” “I’m thinking,” Mr. Brodsky replied, to laughter. But the arguments were fiercer than the kibitzing suggested. Mr. Brodsky accused city and Yankee officials of “undue and illegal secrecy.” Mr. Levine fulminated against Mr. Brodsky for more than twice his allotted three minutes, calling him a “pathetic” grandstander and likening his having subpoenaed Mr. Levine earlier this week to a “Soviet-style” tactic. Mr. Pinsky, meanwhile, dryly recited the Bloomberg administration’s calculus for why the stadium project would remain “significantly revenue-positive for the city.” It seemed unlikely that any minds were changed in several hours listening to the occasional hoots of construction workers in the back, the raw words of proponents like Mr. Rivera and the more polished ones of politicians like Deborah J. Glick, a Manhattan assemblywoman who did not attend but had someone read a letter in her absence (one that Mr. Levine said had errors). “The I.D.A. has no choice but to tell the Yankees it does not have the money to contribute further to its field of high-end dreams,” Ms. Glick’s letter said. In fact, the Bloomberg administration, which controls the agency’s board, has the votes, and approval of the bond issuance at its scheduled Friday meeting appeared inevitable. Mr. Brodsky seemed to concede as much in his remarks, telling the agency’s board, “You have simply failed to do the minimum necessary to make the decision tomorrow legal, appropriate and in the public interest.”

Yankee Stadium (NYC)
Stadiums and Arenas
Bronx (NYC)
New York City


2 States Face Lawsuits Over Same-Sex Marriage

Abstract: Lawsuits seeking recognition for same-sex marriage were filed this week in two states. In Florida, eight gay couples and the American Civil Liberties Union sued the state, arguing it is discriminating against the couples by not recognizing same-sex marriages performed in states where they are legal. A separate lawsuit filed this year in Miami-Dade Circuit Court is challenging the ban on same-sex marriage that Florida voters added to the State Constitution in 2008. In Arizona, a group of same-sex couples filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday, saying a state constitutional amendment and state statutes that ban same-sex marriage violate federal equal-protection and due-process clauses.

Same-Sex Marriage,Gay Marriage
ACLU
Arizona
Florida


Questions in Joliet About Coal-Ash Threat

Abstract: The blue house is small and weathered, but for Leon Bilbrew, it is his castle. His hunting dogs are in cages in the yard, and the walls inside his Joliet home are lined with pelts of beaver, albino raccoon and skunk that he has trapped. He keeps beehives and sells the honey at farmers markets. Mr. Bilbrew has lived here for almost four decades, after leaving Canton, Miss., at age 18 in search of opportunities up North. He attended culinary arts school and worked as a chef until he was sidelined by a stroke three years ago. He has lived alone since the 1980s, when his wife moved with their six children to California, and he is content with his life. But now every time he takes a drink from the tap or looks across the street at a gaping hole filled with black sludge, he worries that the way he lives could be in jeopardy. Beyond the pit are the three smokestacks and towering coal piles of a power plant owned by Midwest Generation. The pit, a former limestone quarry, stores ash from the bottom of the boiler where coal is burned to produce electricity. The ash has mixed with standing groundwater, forming a thick black slush. The quarry was there when Mr. Bilbrew moved in, but he hardly gave it a second thought until last summer, when Tammy Thompson, a local environmental activist, and Sierra Club organizers warned him about the potential of contaminants leaching from the pit into the groundwater that supplies his well. Burning coal produces several kinds of ash and other byproducts collectively referred to as coal ash. Nearly half the 136 million tons of coal ash generated nationwide in 2008 was used in concrete, roofing shingles, asphalt, bricks and other construction materials, according to the American Coal Ash Association. “There are places in your house you can literally reach out and touch these materials,” said Thomas Adams, executive director of the association. Coal ash is also a crucial component in particularly strong and water-resistant concrete, like that used to repave the Dan Ryan Expressway, or in bridges and dams, said Lloyd Meyer, vice president of Ozinga Ready Mix Chicago, one of the area’s largest concrete companies. The coal ash that is not sold is stored in above-ground ponds or in below-ground landfills or pits, like Midwest Generation’s quarry, usually without liners. There are no federal regulations that specifically govern coal-ash disposal, but that will probably change. After a barrier burst just before Christmas 2008 near Kingston, Tenn., and allowed toxic coal-ash slurry to flood a wide area, officials at the Environmental Protection Agency decided that coal-ash disposal should be regulated. The agency is seeking public comment on two possible designations for coal ash that would require new safeguards on its disposal, including phasing out above-ground ponds and requiring liners for all new landfills. The less stringent of the two proposed regulations would entail little government oversight, leaving it to citizens to file lawsuits if they suspect violations. The other would designate coal ash a hazardous waste and mandate government oversight of its transport and disposal. Coal ash includes heavy metals and other potentially harmful compounds, including arsenic, lead, copper and cadmium. When the ash is dry and bound into building materials like concrete, it poses no risk, according to the E.P.A., but it is toxic if it gets into the air or water in significant amounts. Mrs. Thompson and Mr. Bilbrew were among the hundreds of people who attended a hearing in September in Chicago — one of eight nationwide — at which the E.P.A. took testimony on the proposed rules. Residents and environmental groups pleaded for the hazardous-waste designation. Representatives of the coal and construction industries argued that such a move could severely limit reuse of coal ash. The E.P.A. has stipulated that even the more stringent regulation would still allow reuse. But industry officials said their businesses would suffer because consumers would not want something labeled as hazardous waste in their walls, roofs and roads. “It would be very easy for a lawyer of even average abilities to connect the dots and cause some real serious tort problems for the industry,” said Barry McNulty, spokesman for the Wisconsin power company We Energies, which has a coal-ash landfill near Milwaukee. Mr. Meyer, of Ozinga Ready Mix Chicago, said that concrete makers use fly ash in place of cement, which is made in a “nasty, nasty process” of baking limestone in massive kilns. “Cement factories generate a lot of greenhouse gases,” he said. But by using coal ash, “a waste product that we have anyway and making it inert in concrete, we are able to use less cement and generate less greenhouse gases.” Maria Race, director of environmental programs for Midwest Generation, said the hazardous-waste designation would significantly increase the cost of doing business, because the company would lose income from selling coal ash and have to pay for its disposal. The rule would also probably require Midwest Generation to make upgrades to its coal-ash pit in Joliet. Midwest Generation dug new or deeper wells for 17 homes near the pit as a precaution after the pumping of water in a nearby quarry lowered the water table and raised fears of contamination. The company tested a well near Mr. Bilbrew’s home and found no contamination, said Charley Parnell, a spokesman. The company also bought a quarry next to its pit to prevent another owner from pumping it dry, which could suck contaminants from the coal ash farther into the groundwater. Midwest Generation monitors the groundwater around its property and reports the results to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. “It’s a self-implementing program, and they’re doing exactly what they’re supposed to do,” said Rick Cobb, manager of the Illinois E.P.A.’s groundwater and source-water program. Midwest Generation said it had not found heavy metal or other dangerous contamination of wells near the Joliet landfill. The Illinois E.P.A. ordered the company to contain boron seeping into groundwater, though it had not reached wells, Mr. Cobb said. The Joliet landfill was among 39 sites nationwide identified in an August report by the Sierra Club, Earthjustice and the Environmental Integrity Project as places where coal ash had contaminated water. The same groups earlier identified 31 other coal-ash dumps that they said contaminated water, and the federal E.P.A. has noted contamination at 67 others. But Mr. Cobb said there was no evidence of leaching at the Joliet site. The Illinois E.P.A. does not normally test wells, though special testing it did in light of concerns found no well contamination. Mr. Cobb added that any contamination could be caused by other industries nearby. Mr. Bilbrew said that he had no hard feelings toward Midwest Generation and that he just wanted to know if his water was safe. Mrs. Thompson has found an environmental lawyer to do pro bono testing this winter. “That water tastes good to me coming out of my well,” Mr. Bilbrew said, adding that his diabetes medication makes him especially thirsty. “I used to go outside and turn the water hose on, let it get nice and cool and just drink as much as I could take. Now I wonder if that water could kill me.”

Coal
Waste Materials and Disposal
Hazardous and Toxic Substances
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
Water Pollution
Environmental Protection Agency


The Health of a Likely Presidential Candidate Comes Under Brazil’s Microscope

Abstract: BRASÍLIA — They call her the Iron Lady, the woman political analysts credit with helping rescue Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ’s second term as president of Brazil . Dilma Rousseff, Mr. da Silva’s chief of staff, is also his chosen successor, expected to carry the banner of the hugely popular president into next year’s election. But the news that she is being treated for cancer has thrown a wild card into the presidential race, renewing speculation that Mr. da Silva would seek to change the Constitution and run for a third term himself. It has also transformed Ms. Rousseff into a media obsession, with breathless updates on every development of her cancer treatment, from the wig she acknowledged wearing to the leg pains that forced her to check into a hospital in São Paulo early last week. “Dilma’s disease upsets the whole electoral game in Brazil,” said Amaury de Souza, a political analyst in Rio de Janeiro. “Politicians of all stripes and better informed voters are really having second thoughts about her candidacy.” He cites what he calls “Tancredo Neves syndrome,” the post-election trauma of Tancredo Neves, a beloved Brazilian politician who became severely ill the day before he was to take office in 1985 and died without being sworn in. Ms. Rousseff’s very public health crisis began last month, when she revealed that doctors had removed a cancerous tumor from her chest. She began chemotherapy for lymphoma this month, and her oncologist has put her chances of complete recovery at 90 percent. Mr. da Silva, whose job approval rating hovers around 75 percent, has stood by Ms. Rousseff, telling reporters in Beijing on Wednesday that he had talked to her doctors and remained convinced that she would be “totally cured.” Nevertheless, he has been forced to parry daily questions about whether he has a Plan B candidate, or whether he would pursue the constitutional change that would allow him to run again. He has repeatedly said he would not, a point he said Wednesday did not even merit discussion. “First, because there is no third term,” he said, “and second, because Dilma is fine.” But such denials have done little to quiet conjecture. Nor would he be alone if he changed his mind. Many Latin countries adopted strict term limits in the 1970s and ’80s to check authoritarian impulses after years of dictatorships. But lately the trend has been to loosen those laws. Presidents Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Rafael Correa of Ecuador have changed their Constitutions to allow them to run for additional terms. Supporters of President Álvaro Uribe in Colombia are pushing a measure to let him seek a third term. Brazil already changed its Constitution in 1997 to allow President Fernando Henrique Cardoso to run for and win a second term. Mr. da Silva has vowed to be different. “If Lula says he is interested in a third term, then he loses the specialness of being a fresh, new kind of politician in Brazil,” said Peter Hakim, the president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington research group. With the memories of a dictatorship that ended in 1985 still vivid here, an attempt to run again “would be seen by the people as a coup attempt,” said Bolivar Lemounier, a political analyst in São Paulo. As a practical matter it may be too late to change the Constitution, which would require four rounds of congressional voting. The amendment would have to be passed before Sept. 30 in order to be law one year before the election on Oct. 3, 2010. Ms. Rousseff, 61, a former economist and oil minister who has never held an elected office, was little known outside the capital before cancer turned her into a celebrity. Most polls show her with less than 16 percent support, compared with her likely opposition candidate, Gov. José Serra of São Paulo, who commands more than 40 percent. But her anointment by Mr. da Silva, who has steered Brazil through one of its greatest periods of prosperity, automatically made her a contender. She became Mr. da Silva’s chief of staff after her predecessor, José Dirceu, was accused in 2005 of leading a scheme to buy votes in Congress. She has proved an able administrator, helping Mr. da Silva carry out his poverty-relief programs, manage the windfall from the commodities boom and oversee billions of dollars in large infrastructure projects. In an interview here, she refused to discuss her prospective candidacy, saying it was too early, though she said whoever was allied with the president stood the best chance of winning. The daughter of a Brazilian mother and a Bulgarian immigrant father, Ms. Rousseff was active in armed militant organizations in the 1960s fighting to oust the military dictatorship. She said she regretted nothing of her militant past. But she said she never participated in an armed action against the government, despite Brazilian news reports claiming otherwise. She denied being involved in the most notorious episode tied to her, the 1969 armed robbery of $2.5 million from the São Paulo governor’s safe. She was captured and imprisoned in 1970 on charges of participating in an armed militant group. Sentenced to two years and one month, she ended up spending three years behind bars where, she said, she was tortured repeatedly with electric shocks. In the interview, on May 12, she said that the cancer treatment was not affecting her work schedule. “A flu is more inconvenient,” she said. “I feel fine.” Since then, however, she has cut back her travel and failed to make at least four planned appearances. Her illness could cut both ways. If she gets a clean bill of health, the media attention could elevate her name recognition and standing in opinion polls, said Christopher Garman, an analyst at Eurasia Group in Washington. “The impact of greater media coverage will probably trump” the stigma of cancer, he said.

Da Silva Luiz Inacio Lula
Elections
Constitutions
Rousseff Dilma
Brazil


Afghan Defense Minister Announces Resignation

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s defense minister announced his resignation on Tuesday, just three days after Parliament voted to dismiss him and another minister as part of an effort to end corruption. In a short statement at a hastily called news conference, the defense minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, paid his respects to the Afghan Army he helped build and spoke of his pride in its work. “In respect to the decision of the Parliament, the last two times they gave me a vote of confidence, but this time they did not and I accept that,” Mr. Wardak said. He has been defense minister for 10 years. “This is my final meeting with you to say farewell, and I appreciate and honor the hard work of the Afghan Army’s soldiers and officers that have sacrificed themselves for the defense of this country.” The Afghan Parliament voted on Saturday to dismiss Mr. Wardak and the interior minister, Bismillah Khan Mohammedi, the two most powerful members of President Hamid Karzai ’s security team. Lawmakers complained about a range of troubles at the Defense Ministry, including corruption in the its contracting procedures, a failure to respond to attacks beginning in Pakistan and favoritism in appointments. However, some close to the government said that many Parliament members were also motivated by their own frustration that their recommendations for appointments had not been heeded and that they had not gotten a large enough share of contracts. The vote came as the coalition, led by the United States, prepares to withdraw combat forces from the country by 2014. Mr. Wardak was asked to stay on by Mr. Karzai until a replacementwas found. At the news conference, Mr. Wardak spoke of the growth of the army, which after the collapse of the Communist government here was almost completely decimated. The air force was destroyed, along with most of its equipment and all but the most basic weaponry. “When I took over this office, we had barely 50,000 A.N.A. troops, but now we have 195,000 soldiers in the Ministry of Defense, and I am proud of every moment’s activities of the A.N.A. troops in this country,” Mr. Wardak said, referring to the Afghan National Army. “You have bravely defended the country against enemies, and I am confident that the national army’s troops will keep up their fight until the last moment.”

Wardak Abdul Rahim
Afghanistan
Politics and Government
Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations


N.R.C. Suspects Leak in Core of Japan Nuclear Reactor Was More Advanced

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday that some of the core of a stricken Japanese reactor had probably leaked from its steel pressure vessel into the bottom of the containment structure, implying that the damage was even worse than previously thought. The statement came as the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, started to inject nitrogen into the reactor containment vessel of unit No. 1 to prevent a possible explosion. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s statement regarded unit No. 2, and the agency underscored that its interpretation was speculative and based on high radiation readings that Tokyo Electric had found in the lower part of unit No. 2’s primary containment structure, called the drywell. The statement said that the commission “does not believe that the reactor vessel has given way, and we do believe practically all of the core remains in the vessel.” The agency’s statement was issued after Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, told a House hearing on Wednesday morning that the commission had told him that the core had melted through the vessel. He based that on a question his staff had asked the agency. But the agency responded to him by e-mail on Tuesday without directly addressing possible melting, saying only that it speculated that “part of the Unit 2 core may be out of the reactor pressure vessel and may be in the lower space of the drywell.” After the hearing, in response to numerous questions, the agency said that “there are possible leakage paths from the reactor vessel into the drywell.” It did not say whether the fuel was molten or solid. If molten fuel has left the reactor’s pressure vessel and reached the drywell in substantial quantities, it raises the possibility that the fuel could escape the larger containment structure, leading to a large-scale radioactive release. A training manual developed by the companies that operate this type of reactor and dated 2009 refers to the possibility of “creep rupture,” in which molten core material begins seeping through a hole in the vessel and creates a bigger hole as it works; the document says the molten core material can “ablate” a bigger hole. It can then burn through the steel at the bottom of the drywell and interact with the concrete, producing carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which could react explosively. Some engineers have theorized that if a core melted down and concentrated at the bottom of the vessel, it could melt through the vessel and then burn through the concrete of the foundation. One element of such an event would probably be a resumption of the nuclear chain reaction, in a molten mass in which no control would be possible because there would be no control rods to slide smoothly between neatly arrayed bundles of fuel. Other experts say that a resumption of the chain reaction would be difficult or impossible with the type of fuel in use at Fukushima Daiichi. Neither the commission’s response to Mr. Markey nor its public statement later in the day outlines such a serious turn of events. A spokesman for the commission, Scott Burnell, said in an e-mail that a flow of core material out of the reactor vessel to the drywell did not necessarily indicate that the vessel had melted. The vessel, he noted, is penetrated by pipes, and a seal around one might have failed. The agency did not say when the flow might have occurred. In an e-mail to Mr. Markey on Tuesday, the agency gave a figure for radiation levels in the drywell high enough to cause death within minutes. The commission’s statement said that since it believed the reactor vessel had not given way, “Every available method should be used to add fresh water to the Unit 2 reactor vessel and to continue cooling the core.” Linda L. Gunter, a spokeswoman for Tokyo Electric, dismissed the N.R.C. analysis, saying Thursday morning, “We believe the containment for the reactor is still functioning at Unit 2; however, the damage to the suppression pool may be the source of the radiation.” But a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency of Japan said that he was familiar with the N.R.C. statement and agreed that it was possible the core had leaked into the larger containment vessel. The Japanese agency also confirmed that nitrogen injections had started at the No. 1 reactor, to reduce the risk of an explosion from hydrogen gas that might be building up. . Officials said the step was being taken as a precaution, not because an explosion was deemed imminent. “We do not believe there is a lot of hydrogen in the units,” Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of the regulatory body, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, told reporters Wednesday. This is the first injection of nitrogen into any of the reactors. The same approach might be tried later for the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors. Hydrogen explosions occurred in some of the reactors in the days after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that crippled the nuclear plant. The explosions damaged the outer buildings around the reactors. It was thought that the hydrogen was produced when zirconium from fuel rods reacted with steam. Mr. Nishiyama said a concern now was that as the reactors gradually cooled, there would be less steam in the containment vessels, leaving room for oxygen to enter, react with the hydrogen and cause explosions. Injecting nitrogen can reduce the amount of hydrogen and oxygen. The injection of nitrogen was one of the steps recommended by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a confidential assessment dated March 26 . Mr. Nishiyama said the recommendation “substantiated and reinforced” an idea already being discussed by the Japanese authorities.

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Japan)


Super Bowl Dream Passes From the Father to the Son

Abstract: KIRKLAND, Wash., Jan. 19 - Mosi Tatupu never won a Super Bowl during his 14-year N.F.L. career. His son, however, is on the verge of reaching that goal as a rookie. As the leading tackler on the Seattle Seahawks, Lofa Tatupu will carry his own emotions, as well as his father's, into the American Football Conference championship game against the Carolina Panthers on Sunday. When Tatupu is calling the defensive signals as a middle linebacker for the Seahawks, reading the eyes of Carolina quarterback Jake Delhomme, his father will be watching him and living vicariously through him. Mosi Tatupu said he would be remembering his days as a fullback and special-teams ace with the New England Patriots. "My son realizes he's blessed to have this chance, and he'll be ready," he said during a telephone interview from Massachusetts on Wednesday. He said he planned to attend Sunday's game at Qwest Field. "I'm proud of him, the way he's handled himself and the way he's stepped right in as a young player for that team," Mosi Tatupu said. "He's a smart kid, and even though I played in the N.F.L., nothing has come easy for him. He's worked hard to get where he is, because not everyone has always believed in his ability." Listed at 5 feet 11 inches and 238 pounds, the younger Tatupu is considered an undersized linebacker, the kind of player who is more impressive on the field than he is on videotape. But he has many strengths -- uncanny instincts, superb tackling ability and impressive closing speed on ball carriers. He and linebacker Shawne Merriman of San Diego were the two defensive rookies drafted last year who made the most immediate impact on their teams. Tatupu was named the league's rookie of the month in December and January, and with 105 tackles in the regular season, he became the first rookie to lead the Seahawks in that category since Terry Beeson in 1977. When Seattle selected Tatupu in the second round with the 45th pick of the N.F.L. draft, some suggested the Seahawks picked him too high. Now many teams regret passing on him. He led the Seahawks with 10 tackles in last Saturday's playoff victory against Washington, and his signature performance came against the Philadelphia Eagles on a Monday night in early December, when he returned an interception 38 yards for a touchdown and made two bone-jarring hits on running back Brian Westbrook. "I just wanted to come in, contribute and learn as quickly as I could," Tatupu said at his locker Thursday. "The way we've come together as a team has made it a special year." Seahawks defensive end Bryce Fisher said Tatupu had become a team leader. "Once in a while, he'll call guys together and say something to get us going," Fisher said. "But mostly, he's out there making plays. Guys respect that more than anything." Tatupu is not the only Seahawks player whose family has N.F.L. ties. Quarterback Matt Hasselbeck is the son of Don Hasselbeck, a former tight end who had a nine-year N.F.L. career and who was Mosi Tatupu's teammate with the Patriots from 1977 to 1983. As a child, Lofa Tatupu played Pop Warner football in Massachusetts against Nathaniel Hasselbeck, one of Matt's brothers. Athletics was always the center of his life, and playing in the N.F.L. never seemed an unattainable goal. In high school, Tatupu played for his father, who was the coach at King Philip Regional High School in Wrentham, Mass. Lofa was the starting quarterback and middle linebacker, but King Philip was not one of the bigger high schools in the state, and scholarship offers did not pour in. "He wanted to go to Boston College, but they thought he was too small, like a lot of places," said Mosi Tatupu, now an assistant at Curry College in Milton, Mass. "Most of the interest came from smaller schools." Tatupu eventually went to the University of Maine, an N.C.A.A. Division I-AA program. But he never abandoned his dream of playing big-time college football. After starting for a year at Maine, he wanted to transfer. His father called the University of Southern California because he had played there and knew the Trojans' coach, Pete Carroll, and members of his staff. Carroll watched videotape and offered Tatupu a scholarship. He started 25 games, helping the Trojans win consecutive national championships. John Marshall, Seattle's linebacker coach, was the position coach at U.S.C. during the 1970's, when Mosi Tatupu was there. "Lofa's a lot like his father, very serious about being good," Marshall said. "Lofa works hard, he studies hard, he plays hard and he's smart. It's no accident that he's good." When Tatupu declared himself eligible for the April draft despite having another year of college eligibility, his father expressed reservations. "I wanted him to stay one more year and graduate, because when I came out of school, I was short some credits," Mosi Tatupu said. "I didn't graduate until 10 years later, when I was in my 30's, and it was rough." In Mosi Tatupu's only Super Bowl appearance, at the end of the 1985 season, the Chicago Bears pounded his Patriots, 46-10. His son seeks a better ending. "This isn't the time to reflect on what a good season it has been," Tatupu said. "We have a chance to make it really special."

CAROLINA PANTHERS
SEATTLE SEAHAWKS
TATUPU LOFA
PLAYOFF GAMES
FOOTBALL


The Netherlands: Taylor Trial Ends

Abstract: Arguments in the more than three-year-long war crimes trial of Charles Taylor , the former Liberian president, ended Friday at a United Nations -backed court in The Hague. The case against the first African president to face an international tribunal has been the scene of much courtroom drama and multiple delays as the defense dragged out proceedings, ignoring deadlines and staging several boycotts. Mr. Taylor, 62, was indicted while in office in 2003 and charged with large-scale atrocities committed by rebels under his command. Mr. Taylor has denied the charges and dismissed his trial as a political event. If he is found guilty, he will serve his sentence in a British jail. The three international judges are expected to take months before delivering their verdict.

War Crimes Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity


Questions and Answers About the Sequester

Abstract: Unless Congress intervenes, the law requires the Obama administration to impose $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts to military and domestic programs on March 1. Those cuts would be the start of $1 trillion in cuts over the next decade. These cuts have come to be known as the sequester, and they are dominating the current political discussion in Washington. Here is a primer on what the sequester is and how we got here. Q. What is the origin of the sequester? A. It emerged from the refusal of House Republicans to raise the debt ceiling in 2011 without significant deficit reduction. In response, the two parties agreed to the Budget Control Act , which cut domestic spending over the next 10 years by about $1 trillion. Democrats refused to agree to more cuts without additional revenue from taxes, and Republicans refused to agree to tax increases. Instead, Congress set up a committee to find further deficit reduction. To push the committee to reach a deal, negotiators established a fallback mechanism meant to be so onerous it would never happen: $1.2 trillion in across-the-board, automatic cuts to both military and domestic programs, set to begin this year. Q. Why didn’t they take effect on Jan. 1? A. The New Year’s Eve deal to head off automatic tax increases delayed the cuts for two months. The deal also reduced the size of the cuts by $24 billion, out of a total of $109 billion this year, with a combination of cuts and tax revenue measures. Q. Why the word “sequester”? A. In past decades, budget laws have periodically allowed the executive branch to make small across-the-board spending cuts to the levels initially appropriated by Congress. These cuts are known as “sequestration” because the government withdraws the money after Congress has released it. The looming sequestration is much larger than previous ones, though. Over the full fiscal year — Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 — the cuts would equal roughly 5 percent of nonmilitary programs and 8 percent of defense programs. Because they would hit almost halfway through the fiscal year, the White House Office of Management and Budget estimates the true impact for the final seven months to be closer to 9 percent for nondefense programs and 13 percent for defense programs. Q. Whose idea was it? A. That is in dispute. Republicans say the White House came up with the idea. Democrats agree, to a point. But Democrats explain that the president proposed a mix of automatic tax increases and domestic cuts. Republicans rejected that mix and said they would instead accept another idea they had traditionally opposed: military cuts. Regardless, the Budget Control Act, including the cuts, passed on a bipartisan vote that included almost all Republican leaders, and President Obama signed it. Q. Can the federal departments and agencies choose which programs to cut, sparing those that officials consider vital? A. No. Under the rules, the percentage cuts must apply to specific programs, projects and activities. Everything is subject to the same percentage cut. That spreads the pain, but it also prevents agency managers from focusing the cuts on programs that may be ineffective or inefficient — and protecting those that may affect public health and safety. Q. When will people begin to notice the cuts? A. Around March 1, federal offices must tell contractors, grant recipients, governors and others how much money they stand to lose. By the end of the month, people will begin to notice changes. The first checks that go out after that deadline to the unemployed — likely around March 7 — will have a substantial reduction, 9.4 percent. The first checks to doctors and others who care for Medicare patients will also be nicked. The secretary of defense notified Congress on Wednesday that employee furloughs were necessary. By April 6, 45 days from that notice, layoffs and furloughs will begin in the Defense Department’s enormous civilian work force. Other furloughs, affecting air traffic controllers, meat inspectors and others, will begin in April and are likely to accelerate as the departments struggle to meet savings targets by Sept. 30. Q. In the coming weeks and months, could Congress and the White House cancel or replace the cuts? A. Yes, but right now the parties are far apart on an alternative. Mr. Obama wants a 50-50 mix of spending cuts and tax increases to replace the sequester. Congressional Republicans say they are willing to shift the cuts to “mandatory” programs not subject to Congress’s annual discretion, like food stamps, children’s health insurance and Medicaid, and spread them out over 10 years. Republicans say they will not raise taxes. Democrats hope to force Republicans to the negotiating table with a pressure campaign aimed at the public, but even they concede that is not likely to work until the pain of the cuts becomes apparent this spring. Q. What might such a deal look like? A. Mr. Obama wants the mini-deal that pushed the sequester from January to March to be the precedent: Half revenues, one-quarter military cuts, one-quarter domestic cuts. He also wants it to be large enough to put off the sequester until Sept. 30. That delay could give the White House and Congress time to negotiate a larger budget deal that included both cuts to Social Security and Medicare and tax increases. Republicans say they will not accept any additional tax revenue. Any deal is likely to fall somewhere between the two parties’ current positions. Q. The two years have been filled with one budget deadline after another. Is this the end? A. Not necessarily. Any subsequent deal to cancel the sequester would probably include a new deadline. If negotiators fail to meet, the next nine years of sequestration cuts would presumably kick in. Beyond the sequester, the budgetary authority to keep the federal government operating runs out on March 27. Unless the two parties can agree on a new deal, portions of the federal government could be required to shut down that day.

Federal Budget
Health Insurance
Medicaid
Tax
US Politics
Barack Obama


Doctors Without Borders Calls for Inquiry Into Kunduz Hospital Attack

Abstract: GENEVA — The aid organization Doctors Without Borders called on Wednesday for a little-known international agency to carry out an independent investigation of the attack by an American aircraft on its hospital in northern Afghanistan. Joanne Liu, international president of Doctors Without Borders, said that the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission , a body set up under the Geneva Conventions, should investigate the attack that destroyed the aid group’s hospital in Kunduz, killing 12 members of its medical staff and 10 patients, including three children. “It is unacceptable that the bombing of a hospital and the killing of staff and patients can be dismissed as collateral damage or brushed aside as a mistake,” Ms. Liu said at a news conference in Geneva. “This was not just an attack on our hospital. It was an attack on the Geneva Conventions. This cannot be tolerated.” She added: “If we let this go as if it were a nonevent, we are basically giving a blank check to any country” involved in an armed conflict. Gen. John F. Campbell, commander of the United States forces in Afghanistan, told a Senate panel on Tuesday that the hospital was “mistakenly struck” as a result of a decision “within the U.S. chain of command.” Doctors Without Borders, which has likened the bombing to a war crime , said the purpose of the investigation would not be to establish criminal liability, but rather to clarify the laws of war and the conditions under which medical teams can operate in situations of armed conflict. “We need to safeguard that space to allow access to health care in conflicts, that’s the essential message,” Ms. Liu said, emphasizing that without such safeguards, it would be impossible to continue operating in other conflict zones, like Syria, Ukraine and Yemen. “It’s about being able to care for populations in conflict areas.” Ms. Liu said that patients burned in their beds, and that doctors, nurses and other staff members were killed as they worked. “Our colleagues had to operate on each other,” she said. “One of our doctors died on an improvised operating table — an office desk — while his colleagues tried to save his life.” The 15-person commission, established in 1991 to investigate breaches of international humanitarian law, has never been activated to conduct such an investigation, and doing so would require the consent of the United States and Afghanistan, said Françoise Saulnier, the charity’s chief legal counsel. Doctors Without Borders sent letters on Tuesday asking the 76 nations that supported the formation of the commission to endorse their call for an investigation. The commission’s investigation would be only a first step, and Doctors Without Borders would determine its next moves on the basis of the panel’s findings, Ms. Saulnier said, but she added, “We work on the assumption of a war crime.” U.S. Airstrikes, Afghan Casualties Examples of large civilian casualty incidents in Afghanistan caused by the United States military. The United States military, NATO and the Afghan authorities have opened inquiries into the bombing, but Ms. Liu said that was insufficient. “We cannot rely on only internal military investigations,” she said. The hospital, a major site with 13 doctors and surgeons that opened four years ago, conducted 6,000 surgical procedures and more than 20,000 consultations in 2014. “This was high-tech medicine,” Ms. Liu said. “This was not a little bush hospital, you could not miss it.” The charity reported that its hospital building — housing an intensive care unit, emergency rooms and physiotherapy unit — was hit four or five times at intervals of about 15 minutes. No other building was hit, “so we do not have doubts this building was targeted,” said Bruno Jochum, general director of the charity’s Swiss branch. Doctors Without Borders said that it had notified the armed forces from Afghanistan and its allies of the coordinates of the hospital as recently as Sept. 29, and that the bombing continued for 30 minutes after the aid group called military officials in Kabul and Washington to tell them they were striking a hospital. The 12 medical staff members killed in the attack were all Afghan, the charity said. Three of the charity’s international staff members who were in the hospital at the time survived. General Campbell said the military had received a request for air support from Afghan troops. But reports from hospital staff members said “there was simply no account” of the presence of armed fighters on the premises, Mr. Jochum said. “We want to be extremely strong and clear on this,” he added.

Doctors Without Borders
Kunduz
Joanne Liu
John Campbell


The Sculptor Backstage

Abstract: Working as the stage doorman of the Longacre Theater on West 48th Street in the theater district, Regan Kimmel sits in a small room inside the alleyway entrance and buzzes in the cast and crew. “Easiest job I’ve ever had,” said Mr. Kimmel, 58. “The hardest thing is the boredom factor — you get a lot of downtime.” This downtime, combined with the scrap wire lying around after the theater’s renovation a few years back, led to Mr. Kimmel’s becoming the Longacre’s unofficial sculptor in residence. The extent of Mr. Kimmel’s fine art background was “making snowmen and sand castles for my kids,” he said, but he began fiddling with the scrap wire in 2009 while the Australian dance show “Burn the Floor” was at the theater. Mr. Kimmel gave a married couple performing in the show some wire flowers for their anniversary, and began fashioning simple figures and ornaments for other cast members while sitting at his small security desk, where a speaker delivers the audio from the onstage performance and a video monitor shows surveillance camera feeds. The Longacre’s house electrician, Richard Rogers, kept feeding Mr. Kimmel encouragement and more wire. Mr. Kimmel improved rapidly at creating a statue made from a single continuous strip, like an impressive one-stroke pen drawing. By the time “La Cage Aux Folles” opened there in 2010, Mr. Kimmel’s work was displayed all over the theater, and the stage door had become a sculptor’s studio. The “Cage” performers were snapping up Mr. Kimmel’s work, as gifts or purchases. Veanne Cox bought a mobile. Kelsey Grammer picked up a rendering of Santa, and Mr. Kimmel gave Mr. Grammer’s wife, Kayte, a pair of turtle doves as a wedding present. “It just sort of exploded,” he said. “I basically started doing this to amuse the cast and crew. I was as surprised as anybody that people seemed to like it.” The “Cage” crew also began giving Mr. Kimmel artistic input. For example, Mr. Kimmel said that while he worked on an elaborate model of the cabaret scene in “La Cage,” Harvey Fierstein told him in his trademark gravelly voice, “You got to have more gay couples.” Bill Nolte, who performed in “La Cage,” became a booster of Mr. Kimmel’s work, posting photographs of the sculptures on his Facebook page and getting him commissions from friends. Mr. Nolte connected Mr. Kimmel with the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS charity to whose auctions Mr. Kimmel donated dozens of pieces. The Shubert Organization, which owns the Longacre, has given Mr. Kimmel permission to work on his sculptures during his shift, and display them in the theater, said Mr. Kimmel, who grew up in Tulsa, Okla., and now lives in Nutley, N.J. He is divorced with two grown children. He was the production manager for a New Jersey theater company before going to work at the Longacre about 10 years ago. For the productions that followed “La Cage,” Mr. Kimmel began giving performers pieces on opening and closing nights, and others bought his work. Jennifer Lim, the female lead in “Chinglish,” about an American man doing business in China, took home a pair of Chinese dragons and birds. Henry Winkler, who starred in “The Performers,” about the pornography industry, purchased a wiry giraffe. In addition, for each production, Mr. Kimmel began sprucing up the unceremonious stage door entrance with an ornate wire portal — similar to a headboard for a small bed — to hang over the entranceway. He took his cues from the incoming props. “La Cage Aux Folles” got a French flowery-themed portal. The one for “Chinglish” was done in an Asian bamboo style with the name spelled out in wire-wrought Chinese, for which the cast helped Mr. Kimmel with the characters. The portal for “Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth” included replicas of three championship belts, and “Magic/Bird” had basketballs and players. His sign for “The Performers” included a risqué fishnet-stockings motif that struck the fancy of the show’s producer, Robyn Goodman. Mr. Kimmel told her he wanted to keep all the old portals — a half dozen so far — hanging for posterity on the wall of the secured alley outside the stage door. On Thursday, he sat at the stage door making a portal for the upcoming production of “First Date,” a musical about romance in the age of technology. He now had spools of 12- and 14-gauge wire, and plenty of downtime. He may be selling pieces to celebrities, but Mr. Kimmel is still a country boy in the big city, not a highfalutin sculptor. “I’m just bending wire,” he said, deflecting a compliment. “It keeps me off the street.”

Sculpture
Theater
Longacre Theater Manhattan NY
Midtown Area Manhattan
Art


Globalization That Works for Workers at Home

Abstract: Mickey Kantor has a vivid memory of August 1993. The North American Free Trade Agreement was in trouble. Though the agreement had been signed the year before , during the administration of George H.W. Bush, the newly elected Bill Clinton had promised to attach side deals to the pact to guarantee minimum labor and environmental standards. The Mexican government hated them — they were thinly disguised protectionist tools to reward Mr. Clinton’s union friends, it thought. Mr. Kantor, then the nation’s chief trade negotiator, had to convince the Mexicans that Congress would not ratify the deal without them. “There was not a lot of space to negotiate,” he told me. “We could negotiate how to do it but not whether we would do it.” Mr. Kantor invited the Mexican trade minister, Jaime Serra Puche, to watch the Senate pass the president’s deficit-reduction package. It made it, given the opposition of every Republican and some Democrats, only by the single vote of Vice President Al Gore. “When he saw that, he understood,” he said. By November, the side agreements were in place. In January 1994, Nafta came into being. Labor rights had found a place in the rules governing international trade. And they didn’t make much difference. Two decades on, President Obama and his chief trade negotiator, Michael B. Froman, are navigating similar straits. Hoping to push through a trade agreement with over a dozen countries around the Pacific Rim, and another with the European Union, they must convince several skeptical domestic constituencies — especially America’s beleaguered labor unions — that the deals are worth having. The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement “will constitute the largest expansion of enforceable labor rights in history,” noted the Economic Report of the President , released last week, “more than quadrupling the number of people around the world covered by enforceable labor standards.” The pursuit of trade agreements, the report said, “maximizes globalization’s benefits while minimizing globalization’s unwanted side effects.” They level the playing field, as it were, between American businesses and workers, and those in, say, Peru or Vietnam. And yet the fact is, it can’t be done. If we have learned anything in the two decades since Nafta, it is that no trade agreement can protect American workers on the losing side of globalization. There is a place for trade agreements: They apply rules to globalization. Without them, globalization would probably work worse, not only for the United States but also for its trading partners. “Globalization would happen with or without trade agreements,” Mr. Froman said in an interview. “Trade agreements are tools to shape globalization. This includes raising labor standards.” The United States is not the only country trying to write rules to govern the process. China, in particular, is negotiating trade agreements with many of its neighbors that contain little in the way of environmental and labor standards or other safeguards. “There is a real competition over what rules of the road will shape the global trading system,” Mr. Froman argued. “If the situation is difficult for American workers today, what will it be like competing against Asian countries with low standards set by China?” Though the case for trade deals may be sound, one shouldn’t overstate their power. Take Nafta. The International Labor Organization reports a couple of cases in the 1990s where Nafta’s side agreements pressed companies to recognize independent unions. Some manufacturing plants on the border dropped pre-employment pregnancy tests. But level the playing field for workers in Mexico and the United States? Nafta did not. While labor rules have been improved in later trade agreements, it is unclear how much difference they have made in the lives of workers, noted Marva Corley-Coulibaly, an economist at the International Labor Organization. Thea Lee, deputy chief of staff of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said: “We still find them frustrating.” One thing is certain. If the goal was to protect American workers from globalization’s “unwanted side effects,” they have clearly not been up to the task. Research by David Autor of M.I.T., Gordon Hanson of the University of California, San Diego, and David Dorn of the Center for Monetary and Financial Studies in Madrid finds that rising competition from Chinese imports accounted for about a quarter of the decline in manufacturing jobs between 1990 and 2007. Short of cutting China off from world markets — a crazy prescription that would disrupt global production chains and very likely spread misery around the world — no tweaking of the trade rules will reverse this tide. “Labor provisions can play a role, but they are not going to solve these issues,” said Ms. Corley-Coulibaly, the I.L.O. economist. Step back and consider globalization, steered however imperfectly by trade agreements and other such deals. By and large, it has been a force for prosperity — fostering development around the world and bringing millions of people out of poverty. Ask pretty much any mainstream economist and you will hear that most Americans benefited , too. So how about this for a strategy to cope with the dislocations of global integration? Let’s not sweat too much the trade agreements and their standards. Protecting American workers from the downside of globalization depends less on changing the rules of other, poorer countries than on improving our own. The United States has, in fact, some of the weakest labor protections in the advanced world. Hostility toward organized labor in parts of the country is so intense that even companies that fervently want their workers to unionize can’t do it. And it’s not just about labor law. From unemployment insurance to pensions, the United States has a particularly threadbare safety net. Government social spending is among the lowest in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. European workers displaced by China can rely on a deeply rooted network of public support. American workers are pretty much on their own. Considered this way, trade agreements offer a different sort of opportunity to level the playing field. It’s not about forcing countries along the Pacific Rim to bring labor standards up to American norms. Rather, when it gets down to negotiating the details of a trade agreement with the European Union, the United States might import the region’s more expansive labor standards and its more generous social policies. This is an idea that organized labor could rally around. “We would like to build on the strengths that Europe has achieved, not weaken them,” Ms. Lee said. “We want very strong and ambitious labor standards in a European deal.” And it will do much more for American workers than imposing a “level playing field” on Mexico, China, Peru or Vietnam.

International trade
NAFTA
Trans-Pacific Partnership
Labor Unions
Barack Obama
Jobs


Australian’s P.O.W. Novel Wins Man Booker Prize

Abstract: The Australian novelist Richard Flanagan was awarded the Man Booker Prize on Tuesday for “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” which tells the harrowing story of an Australian surgeon who is held in a Japanese P.O.W. camp and is forced to work on the Thailand-Burma Railway. Mr. Flanagan, 53, who was born in Tasmania, is the third Australian to win the prize, following Thomas Keneally and the two-time winner Peter Carey. The philosopher A. C. Grayling, the chairman of the judges, called the book “a magnificent novel of love and war.” He praised Mr. Flanagan’s elegant and forceful prose and his ability to bridge “East and West, past and present, with a story of guilt and heroism.” “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” which takes its title from a travel diary written in prose and in haiku by the 17th-century Japanese writer Matsuo Basho, is Mr. Flanagan’s sixth novel. It was inspired by a painful piece of family history: Mr. Flanagan’s father was taken prisoner by the Japanese during World War II and forced to work as a slave laborer. In an article for The Sydney Morning Herald last year, Mr. Flanagan described how he had written five different versions of the story before he was satisfied. In the end, he spent 12 years working on the novel. To research it, he traveled to Thailand and walked along the railway, also known as the Death Railway, occasionally carrying rocks to mimic the experience of the prisoners. In Japan, he interviewed several former guards who had worked on the railway. He also interviewed his father extensively. His father died just after Mr. Flanagan finished a draft of “The Narrow Road to the Deep North.” “He never asked me what the story was, and he trusted me to write something that wouldn’t shame the memory of the people who died,” Mr. Flanagan said in a telephone interview after the awards ceremony. “I only realized after he died what an extraordinary gift that was. As a novelist, you have to be free. Books can’t be an act of filial duty.” The narrative toggles back and forth between the prisoner-of-war camp, where the surgeon, Dorrigo Evans, struggles to survive and remembers a love affair with his uncle’s young wife, and contemporary Australia, where Evans is an old man. The book received strong reviews in the United States and Britain for its stark depictions of the brutal conditions that P.O.W.s faced, and for Mr. Flanagan’s bold decision to write at times from the guards’ point of view. The novel, which was published by Chatto & Windus in Britain, was released in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf in August. Knopf will print an additional 53,000 copies, a spokesman said. The Booker, with its cachet and prize of roughly $80,000, is Britain’s most prestigious literary award. The contest was especially heated and closely watched this year because, for the first time, the prize was open to all novels written in English and published in Britain, regardless of the author’s nationality. Previously, only writers from Britain, the Commonwealth nations, Ireland and Zimbabwe were eligible. The new rules incited a backlash in Britain, where some authors and literary critics fretted about a coming American literary invasion. When the long list of nominees was announced in July, those fears seemed to have been borne out: Five of the 13 nominees were American, prompting the BBC and other British news media outlets to complain that British and Commonwealth authors were being “edged out” by American interlopers. Two American authors, Joshua Ferris and Karen Joy Fowler, made the six-book short list. This year’s nominees included Mr. Ferris’s novel “To Rise Again at a Decent Hour,” which features a misanthropic New York dentist; Ms. Fowler’s “We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves,” about a young woman whose twin sister and older brother disappeared; “J,” a dystopian novel by Howard Jacobson, a former Booker winner; Neel Mukherjee’s “The Lives of Others,” which takes place in 1960s Calcutta; and Ali Smith’s formally innovative novel, “How to Be Both,” which tells two stories — a historical tale about a 15th-century Renaissance artist and a contemporary narrative about a teenage girl whose mother has died — that can be read in either order. Last year, Eleanor Catton won the prize for her 848-page experimental novel, “The Luminaries,” becoming, at 28, the youngest writer to win the Booker. Mr. Flanagan’s victory was cheered by the British newspaper The Guardian, among others, and seemed to ease concerns about the rule changes. He dedicated the novel to Prisoner 335 — his father’s inmate number.

Man Booker Prize
Richard Flanagan
Books
Australia
The Narrow Road to the Deep North