Maryhill Museum of Art
Maryhill Museum of Art, overlooking the Columbia River gorge south of Goldendale in Klickitat County, displays diverse collections ranging from Native American treasures to sculptures by Auguste Rodin to Russian Icons. The museum was built by Sam Hill (1857-1931), a Minneapolis railroad executive who moved to the Northwest at the turn of the twentieth century. Construction began in 1914 on what was then planned as a magnificent mansion. The museum opened in the spring of 1940, and by 2001 was receiving 10,000 visitors a month.
In addition to business and investment activities, Sam Hill promoted good roads in Washington and Oregon, international trade, and education. He owned a gas company in Seattle and a telephone company in Portland. One of his ventures was a 6,000-acre model agricultural community in the Klickitat Hills on the Columbia River he named Maryhill after his daughter and his wife. The project never grew as Hill had hoped, but he started construction on a magnificent mansion on the property in 1914. The reinforced concrete structure was designed with eight suites of rooms, seating for 250 dinner guests, and a parking lot.
Hill used the Washington, D.C. architectural firm of Marshall and Hornblower, which had drawn up plans for his home in Seattle as well as public buildings in the nation's capital. The designers used a Flemish style for the 60 by 93 foot main building that was 50 feet high. Since Hill was an advocate of good roads, he included ramps and turnarounds for automobiles.
In 1917, Hill cancelled construction because of financial problems and a wartime labor shortage. At that time, Hill's friend Loie Fuller (1862-1928), a dancer and art promoter well known in Europe, convinced Hill to convert the mansion to a museum. In 1924 Hill incorporated the Maryhill Museum of Art. Fuller used her contacts to assemble a collection starting with works by sculptor August Rodin. She enlisted to the effort San Francisco art patron Alma Spreckles. The museum was formally dedicated on November 3, 1926 by Hill's friend, Queen Marie of Rumania. Queen Marie also donated many pieces for the collection.
Hill died in 1931 and left half his estate to the museum. But litigation over his will stalled the bequest for years and the museum staff had to apply to the courts for funds to maintain the building. After years of struggle by the museum's board and tiny staff, Maryhill Museum of Art opened its doors to visitors on May 13, 1940. That first season, 49,000 people viewed the collections.
By 2001, Maryhill saw 10,000 visitors a month during its March to November season. Maryhill has been accredited by the American Association of Museums, one of only 15 institutions so recognized in the Northwest.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Monday, August 28, 2006
Achilles' Heel
BY MARK STEYN
August 28, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/38668
Our Thought For The Day comes from Steve Centanni, the Fox News reporter freed over the weekend by his captors in Gaza:
"We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it."
Before their release, Mr Centanni and his cameraman, Olaf Wiig, had appeared on camera in Islamic robes, sitting cross-legged, and had read from scripts announcing that they had become observant Muslims and asking Bush and Blair to do likewise. "Islam is not just meant for some people. It is the true religion for all people at all times," said Mr Centanni. "I changed my name to Khaled. I have embraced Islam and say the word Allah."
Earlier, his captors released a statement saying the two men had been offered a choice between a) conversion to Islam; b) the jizya (the tax paid by non-Muslims to their Muslim masters); or c) war. There was no none-of-the-above box. "They chose Islam," said the spokesperson for the group," and that is a gift God gives whom He chooses" — even if circumstances occasionally oblige Him to give it to you down the barrel of a gun.
Just as there are rapists who tell themselves their victims are genuinely in love with them, so no doubt there are those who believe that faith can be enforced at the point of a sword. In one of the most indestructible examples of Islamostockholm Syndrome, the British journalist Yvonne Ridley was kidnapped in Afghanistan, converted to Islam, and has stayed converted: she was on Britain's Islam Channel the other day pitching softball questions to the former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammed about his plans to destroy the United States.
But Centanni and Wiig's brief interlude as practicing Muslims is revealing in a larger sense. Ever since 9/11, the western multicultural mindset has been desperately trying to swaddle Islam within the fluffy quilt of diversity. It's "just" another religion, like the Congregationalists and Episcopalians. To be sure, it's got a few hotheads, but haven't we all? Sticking with this line requires an awful lot of brushing under the carpet and there's so much under there by now it looks like a broadloomed Himalayas. For a start, you can't help noticing the traffic is mostly one-way: In Dr. Mahathir's country, where a long English Common Law tradition is under sustained pressure from sharia, a lady called Lina Joy is currently enduring death threats and a long legal battle because she committed the "crime" of converting from Islam to Catholicism.
Well, that's Malaysia for you. But how about Michigan? Nazra Quraishi, a kindergarten teacher at a local Muslim school, wrote to The Lansing State Journal last month as follows:
"Islam is a guide for humanity, for all times, until the day of judgment. It is forbidden in Islam to convert to any other religion. The penalty is death.There is no disagreement about it. Islam is being embraced by people of other faiths all the time. They should know they can embrace Islam, but cannot get out. This rule is not made by Muslims; it is the supreme law of God."
That seems clear enough, doesn't it? In 1951, Eric Hoffer, America's great longshoreman philosopher, wrote:
"The manner in which a mass movement starts out can also have an effect on the duration and mode of termination of the active phase of the movement."
Christians and Muslims are both "people of the book." But there's a difference: Christianity started out as a religion of the weak, held by the lowliest in society and advanced by conversion and example, independent of the state. A distinction between religion and temporal power is embedded in its founding narratives. Compare the final words of Jesus to his disciples, on the day of his ascension …
"Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."
… with the final words of Mohammed to his disciples:
"I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god but Allah.'"
That's quite a difference. Christ is saying go to the remotest parts of the world and persuade others of what you know to be the truth. Mohammed is saying fight all men until they submit to your truth: It's not a plan for converting an existing empire (as Christianity did) but for establishing a new empire. Islam was born and spread as a warrior's creed and, while that can be sedated, the intensity of anger of today's western Muslims suggests that the Mohammedan fighter endures at the heart of their faith, albeit significantly augmented by greater firepower. Oh, come on, you say, what about the Spanish Inquisition? Well, for one thing, the Inquisition killed fewer people in a century and a half than the jihad does in an average year. But, in the larger sense, it's easy to argue that, numbers aside, it was always an aberration and distortion of Christianity's roots. It's less clear that the jihad in its most violent form is a distortion of Mohammed's message. With Islam, it's the moderate variants of the Balkans, the Central Asian Stans and South Asia that are the aberration. And they're all now fading.
So, if you're pinning your hopes on Islamic reform, the difficulty is that most prominent Islamists are doing no more than Mohammedan karaoke. Here's Osama bin Laden during the post-9/11 Afghan campaign:
"I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah, and his prophet Mohammed."
It's hard to argue direct quotation is a "distortion" of the "religion of peace." The respective statements of Jesus and Mohammed are, to say the least, indicative of disposition. The embrace of Christianity by the state power in Europe was the final stage in a process of pacific conversion. Whereas, at the height of its power in the eighth century, when the "Islamic world" stretched from Spain to India, its population was only minority Muslim, and it suited the Caliphate to keep it that way: fiscally speaking, a subordinate infidel population paying the jizya (the special tax for non-Muslims) was a critical component. Islam was less a proselytizing faith than a rationale for political authority. And today's jihad has far more in common with a conventional imperial regime than with any religious evangelizing.
Which means there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that Islam will soon be able to enforce submission-conversion at the point of a nuke. The good news is that any religion that needs to do that is, by definition, a weak one. More than that, the fierce faith of the 8th century Muslim warrior has been mostly replaced by a lot of hastily cobbled-together flimflam bought wholesale from clapped out European totalitarian pathologies. It would have struck almost any other ruler of Persia as absurd and unworthy to be as pitifully obsessed with Holocaust denial as President Ahmadinejad is: talk about a bad case of Europhile cultural cringe. But in today's mosques and madrassahs there is almost as little contemplation of the divine as there is in the typical Anglican sermon. The great Canadian columnist David Warren argues that Islam is desperately weak, that it has been "idiotized" by these obsolescent imports of mid-20th century Fascism. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but, if Washington had half the psy-ops spooks the movies like to think we have, the spiritual neglect in latter-day Islam is a big Achilles' heel just ripe for exploiting.
BY MARK STEYN
August 28, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/38668
Our Thought For The Day comes from Steve Centanni, the Fox News reporter freed over the weekend by his captors in Gaza:
"We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it."
Before their release, Mr Centanni and his cameraman, Olaf Wiig, had appeared on camera in Islamic robes, sitting cross-legged, and had read from scripts announcing that they had become observant Muslims and asking Bush and Blair to do likewise. "Islam is not just meant for some people. It is the true religion for all people at all times," said Mr Centanni. "I changed my name to Khaled. I have embraced Islam and say the word Allah."
Earlier, his captors released a statement saying the two men had been offered a choice between a) conversion to Islam; b) the jizya (the tax paid by non-Muslims to their Muslim masters); or c) war. There was no none-of-the-above box. "They chose Islam," said the spokesperson for the group," and that is a gift God gives whom He chooses" — even if circumstances occasionally oblige Him to give it to you down the barrel of a gun.
Just as there are rapists who tell themselves their victims are genuinely in love with them, so no doubt there are those who believe that faith can be enforced at the point of a sword. In one of the most indestructible examples of Islamostockholm Syndrome, the British journalist Yvonne Ridley was kidnapped in Afghanistan, converted to Islam, and has stayed converted: she was on Britain's Islam Channel the other day pitching softball questions to the former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammed about his plans to destroy the United States.
But Centanni and Wiig's brief interlude as practicing Muslims is revealing in a larger sense. Ever since 9/11, the western multicultural mindset has been desperately trying to swaddle Islam within the fluffy quilt of diversity. It's "just" another religion, like the Congregationalists and Episcopalians. To be sure, it's got a few hotheads, but haven't we all? Sticking with this line requires an awful lot of brushing under the carpet and there's so much under there by now it looks like a broadloomed Himalayas. For a start, you can't help noticing the traffic is mostly one-way: In Dr. Mahathir's country, where a long English Common Law tradition is under sustained pressure from sharia, a lady called Lina Joy is currently enduring death threats and a long legal battle because she committed the "crime" of converting from Islam to Catholicism.
Well, that's Malaysia for you. But how about Michigan? Nazra Quraishi, a kindergarten teacher at a local Muslim school, wrote to The Lansing State Journal last month as follows:
"Islam is a guide for humanity, for all times, until the day of judgment. It is forbidden in Islam to convert to any other religion. The penalty is death.There is no disagreement about it. Islam is being embraced by people of other faiths all the time. They should know they can embrace Islam, but cannot get out. This rule is not made by Muslims; it is the supreme law of God."
That seems clear enough, doesn't it? In 1951, Eric Hoffer, America's great longshoreman philosopher, wrote:
"The manner in which a mass movement starts out can also have an effect on the duration and mode of termination of the active phase of the movement."
Christians and Muslims are both "people of the book." But there's a difference: Christianity started out as a religion of the weak, held by the lowliest in society and advanced by conversion and example, independent of the state. A distinction between religion and temporal power is embedded in its founding narratives. Compare the final words of Jesus to his disciples, on the day of his ascension …
"Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."
… with the final words of Mohammed to his disciples:
"I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god but Allah.'"
That's quite a difference. Christ is saying go to the remotest parts of the world and persuade others of what you know to be the truth. Mohammed is saying fight all men until they submit to your truth: It's not a plan for converting an existing empire (as Christianity did) but for establishing a new empire. Islam was born and spread as a warrior's creed and, while that can be sedated, the intensity of anger of today's western Muslims suggests that the Mohammedan fighter endures at the heart of their faith, albeit significantly augmented by greater firepower. Oh, come on, you say, what about the Spanish Inquisition? Well, for one thing, the Inquisition killed fewer people in a century and a half than the jihad does in an average year. But, in the larger sense, it's easy to argue that, numbers aside, it was always an aberration and distortion of Christianity's roots. It's less clear that the jihad in its most violent form is a distortion of Mohammed's message. With Islam, it's the moderate variants of the Balkans, the Central Asian Stans and South Asia that are the aberration. And they're all now fading.
So, if you're pinning your hopes on Islamic reform, the difficulty is that most prominent Islamists are doing no more than Mohammedan karaoke. Here's Osama bin Laden during the post-9/11 Afghan campaign:
"I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah, and his prophet Mohammed."
It's hard to argue direct quotation is a "distortion" of the "religion of peace." The respective statements of Jesus and Mohammed are, to say the least, indicative of disposition. The embrace of Christianity by the state power in Europe was the final stage in a process of pacific conversion. Whereas, at the height of its power in the eighth century, when the "Islamic world" stretched from Spain to India, its population was only minority Muslim, and it suited the Caliphate to keep it that way: fiscally speaking, a subordinate infidel population paying the jizya (the special tax for non-Muslims) was a critical component. Islam was less a proselytizing faith than a rationale for political authority. And today's jihad has far more in common with a conventional imperial regime than with any religious evangelizing.
Which means there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that Islam will soon be able to enforce submission-conversion at the point of a nuke. The good news is that any religion that needs to do that is, by definition, a weak one. More than that, the fierce faith of the 8th century Muslim warrior has been mostly replaced by a lot of hastily cobbled-together flimflam bought wholesale from clapped out European totalitarian pathologies. It would have struck almost any other ruler of Persia as absurd and unworthy to be as pitifully obsessed with Holocaust denial as President Ahmadinejad is: talk about a bad case of Europhile cultural cringe. But in today's mosques and madrassahs there is almost as little contemplation of the divine as there is in the typical Anglican sermon. The great Canadian columnist David Warren argues that Islam is desperately weak, that it has been "idiotized" by these obsolescent imports of mid-20th century Fascism. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but, if Washington had half the psy-ops spooks the movies like to think we have, the spiritual neglect in latter-day Islam is a big Achilles' heel just ripe for exploiting.
Oldest Person Now American!
Elizabeth "Lizzie" Bolden (born August 15, 1890 in Somerville, Tennessee) is presumed to be recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest living person, as of August 27, 2006 (no official word from Guinness has yet been given, although Mrs Bolden was next in line from the 2007 Guinness Book list, page 67). She previously held the title from August 30 to December 9, 2005 until María Esther Capovilla was announced as authenticated. She has become only the second person to hold the title for two terms, the first being Jeanne Calment.
Mrs. Bolden was verified in April 2005 as having been the oldest documented resident of the United States since the death of Emma Verona Johnston the previous December. She displaced Bettie Wilson, who had previously been the oldest known American.
She was thought to be the oldest surviving person in the world when Hendrikje van Andel died on August 30, 2005.
Elizabeth Jones married Lewis Bolden circa 1908. Like Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Bolden was born the daughter of freed slaves, and had a son, Ezell, on September 21, 1909. In the 1900 U.S. Census, she is recorded as having been nine years old and born in August 1890, and in the 1910 census she is recorded as 19 years old, already married with a child. With the destruction of Fayette County, Tennessee records in a 1925 fire, the family had guessed that she was born in 1891, but investigation proved she was a year older.
Lizzie Bolden had seven children, only two of whom are still alive as of 2006. Queen Esther Rhodes is 89 and Mamie Brittmon is 85. In 2003, a Memphis newspaper reported that Lizzie had 34 grandchildren, 124 great-grandchildren, 100 great-great-grandchildren, and 10 great-great-great grandchildren.
She currently resides in a Memphis, Tennessee nursing home. She has been described by her family as unable to communicate, and they have thus requested that media attention (such as interviews and visits) be limited. However, Lizzie was photographed by two photographers for two different books in early 2005, and was featured in Jet Magazine in May 2005 and the local Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper in June 2005. Since her August 30, 2005 accession to the Guinness "world's oldest person" title, Mrs. Bolden has not been seen in public.
On December 9, 2005, Elizabeth Bolden lost the "World's Oldest Person" title when Guinness World Records gave it to María Capovilla of Ecuador, a woman 11 months older. However, with María Capovilla's death on August 27, 2006, Bolden became the oldest recognized person once again.
In July 2006, Bolden entered the all time top ten oldest verified people. In August 2006, Mrs Bolden was photographed publicly for the first time in almost a year, although she did not appear in public for her 116th birthday.
Mrs. Bolden was verified in April 2005 as having been the oldest documented resident of the United States since the death of Emma Verona Johnston the previous December. She displaced Bettie Wilson, who had previously been the oldest known American.
She was thought to be the oldest surviving person in the world when Hendrikje van Andel died on August 30, 2005.
Elizabeth Jones married Lewis Bolden circa 1908. Like Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Bolden was born the daughter of freed slaves, and had a son, Ezell, on September 21, 1909. In the 1900 U.S. Census, she is recorded as having been nine years old and born in August 1890, and in the 1910 census she is recorded as 19 years old, already married with a child. With the destruction of Fayette County, Tennessee records in a 1925 fire, the family had guessed that she was born in 1891, but investigation proved she was a year older.
Lizzie Bolden had seven children, only two of whom are still alive as of 2006. Queen Esther Rhodes is 89 and Mamie Brittmon is 85. In 2003, a Memphis newspaper reported that Lizzie had 34 grandchildren, 124 great-grandchildren, 100 great-great-grandchildren, and 10 great-great-great grandchildren.
She currently resides in a Memphis, Tennessee nursing home. She has been described by her family as unable to communicate, and they have thus requested that media attention (such as interviews and visits) be limited. However, Lizzie was photographed by two photographers for two different books in early 2005, and was featured in Jet Magazine in May 2005 and the local Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper in June 2005. Since her August 30, 2005 accession to the Guinness "world's oldest person" title, Mrs. Bolden has not been seen in public.
On December 9, 2005, Elizabeth Bolden lost the "World's Oldest Person" title when Guinness World Records gave it to María Capovilla of Ecuador, a woman 11 months older. However, with María Capovilla's death on August 27, 2006, Bolden became the oldest recognized person once again.
In July 2006, Bolden entered the all time top ten oldest verified people. In August 2006, Mrs Bolden was photographed publicly for the first time in almost a year, although she did not appear in public for her 116th birthday.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Very Interesting
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/washington/23judge.html?ex=1313985600&en=2a8082331233aff1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
"The federal judge who ruled last week that President Bush's eavesdropping program was unconstitutional is a trustee and an officer of a group that has given at least $125,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union in Michigan, a watchdog group said Tuesday," reports the New York Times:
*** QUOTE ***
The group, Judicial Watch, a conservative organization here that found the connection, said the link posed a possible conflict for the judge, Anna Taylor Diggs, and called for further investigation. . . .
The Web site for the group that supported the A.C.L.U., the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan in Detroit, lists Judge Taylor as its secretary and a trustee. It indicates that trustees make all financing decisions for the organization, whose assets exceed $350 million and which gives grants for a variety of community projects. . . .
The executive director of the Michigan A.C.L.U., Kary Moss, said her group had received four grants totaling $125,000 from the foundation since 1999. They were a $20,000 grant in 1999 for an educational program on the Bill of Rights, $60,000 in 2000, along with the N.A.A.C.P. and other groups for education on racial profiling, $20,000 in 2002 for work on racial profiling and $25,000 in 2002 for a lawyer to work on gay rights.
*** END QUOTE ***
The ACLU is the lead plaintiff in the case and provided legal counsel to the other plaintiffs. Yet the legal ethicists the Times interviews don't seem overly concerned. One of them, Stephen Gillers of New York University, "said he did not think there were grounds for Judge Taylor to remove herself from the case":
*** QUOTE ***
"The question is whether her impartiality might reasonably be questioned," Professor Gillers said, "and the fact that she sits on the board of a group that gives money to the plaintiff for an otherwise unrelated endeavor would not in my mind raise reasonable questions about her partiality on the issue of warrantless wiretapping."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/washington/23judge.html?ex=1313985600&en=2a8082331233aff1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
"The federal judge who ruled last week that President Bush's eavesdropping program was unconstitutional is a trustee and an officer of a group that has given at least $125,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union in Michigan, a watchdog group said Tuesday," reports the New York Times:
*** QUOTE ***
The group, Judicial Watch, a conservative organization here that found the connection, said the link posed a possible conflict for the judge, Anna Taylor Diggs, and called for further investigation. . . .
The Web site for the group that supported the A.C.L.U., the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan in Detroit, lists Judge Taylor as its secretary and a trustee. It indicates that trustees make all financing decisions for the organization, whose assets exceed $350 million and which gives grants for a variety of community projects. . . .
The executive director of the Michigan A.C.L.U., Kary Moss, said her group had received four grants totaling $125,000 from the foundation since 1999. They were a $20,000 grant in 1999 for an educational program on the Bill of Rights, $60,000 in 2000, along with the N.A.A.C.P. and other groups for education on racial profiling, $20,000 in 2002 for work on racial profiling and $25,000 in 2002 for a lawyer to work on gay rights.
*** END QUOTE ***
The ACLU is the lead plaintiff in the case and provided legal counsel to the other plaintiffs. Yet the legal ethicists the Times interviews don't seem overly concerned. One of them, Stephen Gillers of New York University, "said he did not think there were grounds for Judge Taylor to remove herself from the case":
*** QUOTE ***
"The question is whether her impartiality might reasonably be questioned," Professor Gillers said, "and the fact that she sits on the board of a group that gives money to the plaintiff for an otherwise unrelated endeavor would not in my mind raise reasonable questions about her partiality on the issue of warrantless wiretapping."
Johnny Marr Joins Modest Mouse
by Staff | 08.04.2006
For the first time in over 15 years seminial British guitarist Johnny Marr is now a full-time member of a band he didn't form. According to a recent Rolling Stone interview with Modest Mouse singer Isaac Brock, Marr is now "not pretty much. He's a full blown member of the band [Modest Mouse]. It's really fuckin' nice."
Previously it had been reported that Marr was merely involved in the recording of the album, however this is the first confirmation that he will be touring with the band as well.
"He made a cautious commitment to write and record with us, and then the tighter we got, he was like, 'okay, let's tour too,", Brock said.
The Seattle outfit's forthcoming album We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank was recorded in Mississippi and produced by Dennis Heering (Good News For People Who Love Bad News), it's due in stores this fall.
It is not clear what this will mean for Marr's 2nd Healers album which he is said to have been currently recording.
by Staff | 08.04.2006
For the first time in over 15 years seminial British guitarist Johnny Marr is now a full-time member of a band he didn't form. According to a recent Rolling Stone interview with Modest Mouse singer Isaac Brock, Marr is now "not pretty much. He's a full blown member of the band [Modest Mouse]. It's really fuckin' nice."
Previously it had been reported that Marr was merely involved in the recording of the album, however this is the first confirmation that he will be touring with the band as well.
"He made a cautious commitment to write and record with us, and then the tighter we got, he was like, 'okay, let's tour too,", Brock said.
The Seattle outfit's forthcoming album We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank was recorded in Mississippi and produced by Dennis Heering (Good News For People Who Love Bad News), it's due in stores this fall.
It is not clear what this will mean for Marr's 2nd Healers album which he is said to have been currently recording.
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On Francisco Franco
On Francisco Franco written by Charles Few Americans know much about Francisco Franco, leader of the winning side in the Spanish C...
