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It reaches a tipping point, then collapses. The 2007 financial crisis was the culmination of two decades of Americans using debt to fund a lifestyle they couldn't afford, inspired by a sliver of society who could. |
Policies necessary to combat the financial crisis kept the trend going. Almost everyone would be worse off without quantitative easing, but no one gained more than the richest group of Americans who own the most stocks and bonds. |
The result is a three-front storm. After wages stagnate for two decades, the financial crisis takes away the last of what many Americans held onto – the stuff they bought with debt. What remains is a new economy that offers even less employment, income, and stability, and more inequality. |
The Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Brexit, and the rise of Donald Trump are ideologically different, but each represents a group of people shouting, "Stop the ride, I want off." And they're shouting for the same reason: An economy that set a precedent of working for them in the three decades after World War II doesn't ... |
Almost none of this was intentional. It's just what happened, unplanned and unforeseen. "One damn thing after another," a historian once said of his field. |
Pat Kilburg is committed to the arts. |
As founder of Greenville Center for Creative Arts, she encourages others to embrace their inner artist, even as she continues to learn and share her own art. |
Kilburg says the creative work flow, as much as the result, is what brings her happiness these days. She can often be found at the Village of West Greenville, taking in inspiration. |
“I love to work in my studio on Pendleton Street, visit our community art center, Greenville Center for Creative Arts, and walk the shops and businesses along the way,” she says. |
Real beauty can be seen in a person’s integrity and compassion, according to Kilburg. |
As the for future, Kilburg plans to continue creating and encouraging others to follow suit. |
“I want to learn more, make art and chase excellence,” she says. |
photo by Francis Delapena Maria Dahvana Headley: Did someone just tell her a joke? Nope. She always has a smile on her face. |
A first glance at Seattle-based playwright Maria Dahvana Headley brings the word "pixie" to mind. She's a small woman, somewhat exotic looking, with short brown hair, bright shining eyes and a smile that she wears almost permanently. She said her smile is partly responsible for her behind-the-scenes career as opposed t... |
"I was too smiley to be an actress," she said, of course, smiling. But there is so much more to the 30-year-old Headley than just her pretty face. |
Raised in Marsing, Headley spent her high-school summers working in what she called "random capacities" for the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, including working as an apprentice and in the costume shop. |
"One summer, I was a props mistress of some sort," she said. It was that summer that she met Tom Willmorth (a member of ISF's Fool Squad), from whom she later took a drama class. Headley said she'd always been a writer and had been interested in the theater, but learning from Willmorth reinforced those ideas even more.... |
"I was kind of a fixture at their open-mic nights," Headley said. At some point, she said, it evolved. While still in high school, she realized she was writing and working in theater and there was no reason why she couldn't combine the two. The idea of writing plays seemed the obvious progression. |
"The first play I wrote was titled Qualms," Headley said. "It was sort of an exaggerated, angsty play. We wore black dresses and white face paint going, 'Ooooohhhhh.' And at the end, we all screamed in the dark," she said, laughing. |
After high school, Headley moved to New York to attend a theater-writing program at New York University. By then, she said, she had discovered that she liked the idea of creating material that would find its way to the stage rather than interpreting it. |
"There were so many talented [actors] and I wasn't one of them," Headley said. "But I wanted to work with them. I think that's why I thought about going into acting in the first place. I wanted to work with those really talented people. I found I could work with them in a way I was much more capable of." |
During that time, Headley was writing not only plays and screenplays, but short stories and prose. Her 2006 book, The Year of Yes: A Memoir, is about moving from rural Idaho to New York and how she thought that move would jump-start her life. "I kept thinking, 'OK, I'm here. Where's my life?'" she said. |
Part of the problem lay in the lack of satisfaction Headley found dating. Headley wasn't even seeing anyone she really liked; she just kept going out with the same kind of guy. She decided that, to avoid getting mired in dating hell, she would date everyone in New York who asked her (which could be another kind of hell... |
With a good support system and a move back to the Northwest, Headley didn't have to look much further than her own back yard for the fodder for her play Last of the Breed. |
The play is the story of Wyatt Munro, a crusty unkempt old mountain man living in a cabin on prime undeveloped real estate. To avoid the encroachment of a slew of Cape Cods with gas-guzzling emissions-emitting SUVs parked in every driveway, Munro has himself declared an endangered species. During his fight to stay on h... |
Last of the Breed opens on a high note with the Starbucks-sucking, swearing developers and maintains a laugh-out-loud fast pace until the end. The play parodies the ecological issues people in the West are so familiar with, and Headley said the inspiration for Last of the Breed really stemmed from a 1998 statement by t... |
"The actors didn't even know the end of the play," she said. "And they were amazing." She said Last of the Breed was definitely informed by those actors and, in future drafts, went in different directions than she'd intended. |
With the world premiere of Last of the Breed, the busy Headley, who said she works about 23 hours a day, is already turning some of her attention on her next endeavor, something she calls the Upstart Crow Project. For this project, she asked 37 female playwrights to adapt Shakespeare's 37 plays and said she was surpris... |
Headley reads from The Year of Yes on March 22 at BCT. Tickets are $30 and proceeds benefit BCT. Headley will teach a two-day workshop on The Year of Yes, March 29 and 30, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Registration is limited to 20 people, cost is $250. Also on March 29 at 7 p.m., Headley will offer a free preview reading from Last of... |
Bolstered by visitors to the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, Lexington's Blue Grass Airport announced Wednesday that October was one of its busiest months in history. The airport had more than 56,000 passengers departing. Total passenger traffic for the month was up 35.4 percent compared to October 2009, and passen... |
The Games, which happened in September and October, led to 18 special event charter flights and more than three times the average private aircraft activity, airport officials noted. |
The higher numbers also were linked to recently acquired non-stop service by U.S. Airways to New York's LaGuardia Airport and by Delta Air Lines to Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport. |
DENVER — When Tim Cullen was opening his first marijuana business four years ago, the high school biology teacher turned pot entrepreneur struggled to get resumes and references from job applicants. |
Out of the closet, down the street and around the corner. That’s where the line of hopefuls stretched Thursday outside a central Denver office building that was hosting a marijuana industry job fair. |
Cullen, who owns two retail marijuana shops and is a partner in a company that makes hash oil and another that makes vaporizers, was among representatives from about a dozen businesses reviewing applications. |
O.penVAPE, Cullen’s vaporizers company, organized the fair to meet its own growing staffing needs and help others in the industry, said company spokesman Todd Mitchem. |
Among the employers at Thursday’s job fair was a tour company looking for guides to help pot tourists navigate Colorado’s newest industry. Hemp Temps, a specialist staffing agency, and Medicine Man, a dispensary, were also hunting for candidates. Job descriptions included bud tender, sales representative and web design... |
Voters in Colorado and Washington approved sales of marijuana for recreational use in 2012, and recreational sales began first in Colorado, in January. This week, in the world’s first such accounting, the Colorado Department of Revenue reported the state made roughly $2 million in marijuana taxes in January; that is ex... |
Organizers said they had heard beforehand from more than 600 jobseekers who planned to attend. Mitchem said the company may need a bigger venue for the next fair, which he said is already in the works. |
Ian Howe, among the jobseekers in line on Thursday, said he was a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in New York, and hoped to find work with a company that infuses marijuana into foods, or try his hand at growing marijuana. |
Howe, 23, said he moved to Colorado just 3 1/2 weeks ago, and found the state a good fit. |
“I’ve always been an outdoorsy guy, and I’ve always liked to smoke weed,” he said. |
Near Howe in line, Michael Rubens and Tim Miller chatted about what they hoped to get out of the fair. Rubens said he wanted to find a business that might want to exploit his ideas for marijuana ice cream. |
Miller said he was an IT financial specialist who could offer the marijuana industry expertise on banking. The federal government earlier this year issued guidance for banks that at least recognizes that many operate in states where marijuana sales are legal. It did not, however, clarify how banks can do business with ... |
FRIDAY 6 PM, 9TH UPDATE: No major box office changes to report except that The Dark Knight Rises is running less today than Marvel’s The Avengers but had more midnight business. So the two films are running neck and neck. As of 6 PM, The Dark Knight Rises in 4,404 domestic theaters was Friday $80M and weekend $180M est... |
EXCLUSIVE… FRIDAY 2 PM, 8TH UPDATE: Based on matinee projections, The Dark Knight Rises is looking to open with a gargantuan $80M-85M today (which includes $30.6M from midnights). That’s about even with Marvel’s The Avengers opening Friday of $80.5M. Hollywood is making weekend projections of $180M-$200M but Warner Bro... |
Meanwhile, the official North American midnights number for The Dark Knight Rises is public now: it opened with $30.640M from 3,825 locations (for $8,010 per location). Included in the overall total are IMAX grosses of $2.232M from 330 locations (for $7,041 per location). This 2D midnights number shatters the $18.4M mi... |
EXCLUSIVE… FRIDAY 6:30 AM, 6TH UPDATE: I’ve just learned that Warner Bros’ and Legendary Pictures’ 2D The Dark Knight Rises is “headed north of $28M” for its 3,700 midnight showings of the pic. |
EXCLUSIVE… FRIDAY 3 AM, 5TH UPDATE: Fans waited in long lines for hours despite the sweltering heat and the torrential rains in some parts of North America just to attend one of the 3,700 Thursday midnight show locations for Warner Bros’ and Legendary Pictures’ 2D The Dark Knight Rises. Now my sources are tracking this... |
12:39 AM today leaving 14 dead and 50 wounded after a lone gunman opened fire in a packed suburban movie theater at the Aurora Town Center where The Dark Knight Rises was showing just after midnight. Now no one in the movie business knows how this terrible event will affect box office today. Despite isolated incidents,... |
Moviegoers at first thought the gunshots were part of the film’s action sequences. Police told TV stations the shooting was first reported at 12:39 AM after the gunman “just appeared” from the front of Theater 9. Then police arrived and found the suspect in the rear of the theater. The adult male attired in protective ... |
In other parts of the country, first fans lined up for hours ahead of time to see The Dark Knight Rises at the midnight screenings at NYC’s AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13 Theater. Scalpers had been selling those tickets for $65 and as much as $100 for days prior. At the AMC Uptown in Washington, crowds endured torrential ... |
THURSDAY 7:15 PM, 4TH UPDATE: The Dark Knight Rises began its international release Thursday by “dominating everywhere”, according to my sources. I’ve learned the foreign gross so far is an incredible $10.4M from only 9 countries. This is 83% higher than 2008’s The Dark Knight in the same markets. (Not calculating for ... |
THURSDAY 6 PM, 3RD UPDATE: A Warner Bros executive just told me, The Dark Knight Rises is tearing up the box office at midnight. It should pass Marvel’s The Avengers‘ $18.7M as the largest superhero midnight show of all time.” And remember: Avengers also holds the domestic record for the largest opening weekend gross. ... |
EXCLUSIVE THURSDAY, 2ND UPDATE: According to Fandango, domestic box office online ticket sales for Warner Bros’ and Legendary Pictures’ The Dark Knight Rises currently represents 91% of Thursday’s ticket sales. MovieTickets pegged their number at 87.5% for Wednesday. Earlier this week, Fandango surveyed the pic’s ticke... |
Warner Bros should be announcing the first foreign box office results. The Dark Knight Rises opens in only 17 international markets this weekend, representing 6,300 screens. These include 4 of the Top Ten movie markets: UK, Spain, Australia, and Korea. |
In North America, I can report exclusively that The Dark Knight Rises has already banked $25M in pre-sales. |
EXCLUSIVE WEDNESDAY: Here we go again! Another gigantic Hollywood comic book blockbuster opening just after Thursday’s clocks strike midnight. But can The Dark Knight Rises beat Marvel’s The Avengers in weekend grosses and records? Some moguls are telling me no, some moguls are telling me yes. Remember that the largest... |
MovieTickets.com tells me the pic scooped up 80% of all online ticket sales for Tuesday and Fandango 85%. (The figure for Avengers was 95% for that Thursday.) MovieTickets surveys found that, of the people aware of The Dark Knight Rises, 78% said they would see it opening weekend. Overall, on a scale from 1 to 5, with ... |
Related: ‘THE AVENGERS’ NOW BIGGEST OPENER! |
This final installment in its Batman trilogy directed by Chris Nolan will be playing in a whopping 3,700 midnight locations around North America and then 4,404 domestic theaters from Friday through Sunday including 332 IMAX locations. (Nolan utilized IMAX cameras for an hour of the footage from the film. That’s even mo... |
The studio will open another 40 markets over the second weekend and include all major markets with the exception of Italy (August) and China where The China Film Group, which sets release dates for U.S. films, wants to pit The Dark Knight Rises against Sony’s The Amazing Spider-Man on August 30th. “That August date is ... |
There’s been plenty of (metaphorical) eye-rolling, and head-shaking, over the pronouncements of “body-language experts” who have turned up on TV this election season to parse the candidates’ fist bumps and grimaces. Finger-pointing, according to Tonya Reiman, on Fox, represents a “tough guy”; Janine Driver, on ABC, sai... |
A few months ago, an argument about Hillary Clinton broke out on a Laban e-mail list. It was around the time of the Maryland primaries, and most people on the list had been discussing how the “coccyx-heel connection” affects skiing. Three C.M.A.s sent out a gloss of Obama’s movement at a campaign event, praising his ex... |
Clinton changed, the analysts agreed, during the course of the primaries. She dropped the “not very smart” habit of nodding vigorously after making a point, Kaylo said, and she toned down some facial expressions, including “the very exaggerated ‘Oh, hi! Great to see you!’ ” Karen Bradley, a dance scholar, said recently... |
Pena will miss 10-to-15 days with an oblique injury, Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. |
Pena suffered the injury during Tuesday's game against the Phillies. A two-week return timeline would still give him a bit of time to get ready for Opening Day, though his chances of breaking camp with the big-league team were reduced when the club signed Matt Wieters in late February. |
Usually, students are the ones that seek out firms that can help them travel abroad for further studies. However, the reverse is the case with Avail International Consul Limited (AICL), which is seeking to help students get into secondary and tertiary institutions in the United Kingdom (UK), United States and Canada ir... |
Mrs Bola Agunbiade, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), AICL, said in an interview with The Nation at the firm’s Ogba, Lagos office, that they can help brilliant students with good grades in their Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) attract scholarships from reputable institutions outside Nigeria. |
“There are several scholarship opportunities abroad that people are not even aware of. We want to be able to reach out to students, especially those who are intelligent who have come out in flying colours in their O/levels. They may not have the financial capability to travel abroad; however, there are opportunities fo... |
After evaluating their credentials, Mrs Agunbiade said the firm would help scholarship potentials to present their applications to the universities. She added that for the next two months especially, AICL would offer its services free to all categories of students in commemoration of its second anniversary. She said th... |
“We are inviting students and their parents to come in from June 26 all through July and the whole of August. We are looking at them going in for September. We are encouraging them to come here and it is going to be free. We are inviting them to celebrate our second anniversary. |
However, despite the firm’s enthusiasm to help potential students get admissions abroad, Mrs Agunbiade said it only assists those with genuine intention to study. She said if they go abroad for other reasons and misbehave, they spoil the country’s reputation. |
She added: “It is easy for me to tell if the student is genuine. Their parents may have money and just want them to travel. But by the time I talk to them, forgetting even their credentials, I can tell. They might not have the genuine intention to go abroad and really study and its not good for us because institutions ... |
Daniel Radcliffe is in the frame to play beat poet Allen Ginsberg in a new film. |
The feature debut from writer/director John Krokidas, follows the young Ginsberg’s introduction to the Manhattan beat scene, focussing on his relationships with Jack Kerouac and Lucien Carr, according to The Guardian. Carr was jailed for second-degree murder in 1944 after stabbing his stalker, David Kammerer and dumpin... |
Jesse Eisenberg had previously been linked the role of Ginsberg, with Chris Evans and Ben Whishaw lined up for Kerouac and Carr. |
Radcliffe hinted at the role recently, telling the French media that he would be playing a gay character next year. He can next be seen in ghost story The Woman In Black, the trailer for which you can watch below. |
Knife crime is an epidemic. Do we care enough to look for a cure? |
The figures revealed by the Guardian on Tuesday, which show knife deaths among children and teenagers approaching a 40-year high, should shock us all. What’s more, this year is no outlier. Knife crime is back on the rise in a big way. Last year hospital admissions for knife assault wounds jumped by 21%, which followed ... |
Police forces across the country are seeing a rise in knife crime: 38 of the 44 police forces in England and Wales have reported an increase. And the age of those carrying knives is getting younger. When 11-, 12- and 13-year-olds are walking around with knives, something has gone very wrong. |
Behind these numbers, behind every headline, are communities and families in shock. In my area in Croydon, where two teenagers have been killed in recent months, every single youth organisation is reporting increasing anxiety and trauma from the young people they work with. |
So why is it getting worse? Police cuts are a major issue of course, but we can’t arrest ourselves out of this problem. |
We brought young people to parliament last week to meet MPs and talk about their experiences of knife crime. The issues go deep – from mental health to social media, from poverty to fashion. Deterrents and punishments are important of course, but they aren’t the only answer to tackling this in the long term. |
Youth centres are closing and schools are under huge pressure, leading to the “managed moves” of difficult children – often regardless of undiagnosed special needs. Youth workers regularly talk about the “PRU to prison pipeline” of disengaged young people in pupil referral units getting into a cycle of trouble. |
Social media is having a big impact, intensifying the cycle of violence and enabling widespread bullying. Many people want to see technology companies take more responsibility for how their platforms are used, but we also need to look at the channels collating and sharing inappropriate content. |
What do we need to do to turn this around? First we need to recognise that this is a public health crisis. For too long we’ve been focused on the symptoms – we need to look at the causes, not just the crime. We need a cross-government programme of action with multiple departments and long-term ambitions. Five months ag... |
I know from experience how important this is. My local police force saved the life of a young man, putting their fingers into stab wounds in his neck to stop the flow of blood. A week later he was caught on the streets with a stab vest and a knife, looking for revenge. And of course, the justice system is important her... |
But ultimately we need to treat this as an epidemic and cut it off at source. Violence breeds violence. Mental health, social media, youth services, education and poverty are all part of the problem and we need to decide if we care enough to act. How much do we really value these young lives? |
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings' pay keeps climbing. |
Hastings, Netflix's co-founder, took home a total of $24.4 million last year, according to a company filing Monday. His pay rose 5% in 2017 from the year before. |
Most of Hastings' paycheck came from stock options the company granted him. Stock options allow employees to buy or sell company shares at a pre-determined price and time. Since options take time to vest, they're widely used as performance incentives. |
Hastings' base salary was $850,000 last year, but he was awarded $23.5 million worth of options. |
He has not received a cash bonus in the last three years. Netflix's (NFLX) stock has more than tripled in that time. |
Hastings' annual salary has fallen in recent years in favor of higher options. That will continue again this year. Hastings' base salary for 2018 will be lowered to $700,000, but options will go up to $28.7 million. |
Chief content officer Ted Sarandos got an 18% raise last year to bring his total pay to $22.4 million. Sarandos got a $9 million cash bonus. |
Netflix announced last year that it's eliminating bonuses and transferring them into salaries because of the new tax law. The tax code eliminated a loophole for executive compensation. |
In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed a budget with a provision meant to rein in executive pay. The law taxed executive salaries over $1 million a year, but allowed an exemption -- section 162(m) -- for "performance-based" targets. Companies like Netflix used the loophole to deduct bonuses and stock options linked dir... |
Now that 162(m) is dead, Neflix is raising executive base salaries. |
Sarandos received a $1 million salary in 2017, but it will jump to $12 million in 2018 and he'll get $14.2 million in options. Chief product officer Greg Peters got a $1 million salary last year, and it will climb to $6 million this year. |
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