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But Bernhardt reminds us that weather is much like politics: It’s all local and relative. “If you consider 30 degrees cold and the week before it was 50 degrees and then it’s 30, it feels really, really cold. If it was 35 and then dropped to 30, it wouldn’t be so bad. |
“Of course, for people in Atlanta, 30 degrees and 3 inches of snow is a whole lot different than 30 degrees and 3 inches for people in Chicago,” he adds. |
JOHN and I found our wooded Ozark land with its spring-fed creek and deep hollows full of dogwood blossoms on a Saturday in May. On the following Saturday, we were signing papers at the bank. |
When we told my mother we were buying land in the Ozarks, her first question was, "Have you seen any snakes?" |
Whether or not snakes live in the Ozarks, the only possible answer to her question was "No." |
Until we came to Spring Hollow, my encounters with wild creatures had been limited to birds and squirrels: that is, unless the creatures were caged, stuffed, pickled, or pictured. The only other wildlife I had come into contact with was a snake. |
I found the snake when I was playing in our yard, and even to a very little person, it looked like a very small snake. My father said it was a garter snake. As far as my mother was concerned, it might as well have been a rattlesnake, and it must be killed. |
I played inside the house for the rest of that summer, though we never saw another snake in the yard. As a matter of fact, I haven't seen a snake in the city since then, but the fear remained ... a primitive terror based, so I thought, on the natural antipathy that comes with being human. |
My mother would not believe there is such a thing as a harmless or beneficial snake. I knew if I told her now that we were sharing the Ozarks with snakes, we'd never get her to come near the place. So I said the only possible thing: "No snakes." |
Of course I was not telling the truth. We saw our first Arkansas snake when the real estate agent's car swerved to avoid hitting a long black thing stretching over half a country road. |
"Black snake," he said. "Good things to have around." We were driving along the front of what was by then our own property. That snake was obviously one of our neighbors. |
Every bit of Eve's old horror swiveled down my spine, and I was too shocked and embarrassed by my reaction to say anything. For the first time I wondered if I could cope with country living. My doubts bothered me almost as much as seeing the snake. |
I watched as it swirled across the road and disappeared in a patch of blackberry bushes at the edge of our property. How could I ever learn to live with that snake and all of its relatives? |
For the next few days I tried to keep snakes out of my thoughts as completely as I wanted to keep them out of my woods, but it was no use. The horror wouldn't go away. I wanted desperately to love everything about Spring Hollow. I knew country people had to cope, but even before we had enjoyed one Saturday alone on our... |
After spending a few more days floundering in my own confusion and fear, I decided to go to the city's central library and find out more about snakes. I located the section on reptiles, and looked carefully up and down the narrow aisle before I took any books off the shelf. I was unable to shake the feeling that snakes... |
The snake we had seen, the books told me, was a member of the King snake family. This large snake is respected because it eats rats, mice, and other snakes, especially venomous ones. It is normally mild in temperament, and a friend to the farmer as long as it is kept away from the eggs in the henhouse. |
In the reptile reference books I read words like elegant and graceful. I learned how amazingly well snakes have adapted to a life without limbs. I read the obvious (but rarely talked about) fact that snakes never hunt humans, but seek insects, slugs, centipedes, rats, and mice. They usually try their best to stay out o... |
As I sat thinking, books open, I heard a gasp. I turned to see a woman backing off, looking both embarrassed and horrified. I stared after her. Was it that bad? |
If we are thinking, reasoning beings, and all I was reading was true, why do snakes inspire such horror? Does this prove a lingering relationship to something primitive we have not overcome, even if we live in cities remote from any area where a snake might be found? |
Watching the woman retreat, I felt a bit sorry for the reptile family, but my own spine still crinkled coldly when I looked back at the photographs of coiled snakes in the library books. Education was helpful, but I still needed a better answer. I decided to put the whole thing as far out of my thoughts as I possibly c... |
Weeks passed. We spent every Saturday at Spring Hollow, and were beginning to make a clearing on our hillside. We needed space for a storage shed and a spot to park the van. We were planning to enlarge the clearing enough so there would eventually be room for a weekend cabin. |
Saturdays at Spring Hollow meant seeing many living things, including snakes. One very large black snake, perhaps the one we had seen on the road weeks earlier, came by regularly. We named him Fred, after a friend of ours who kept a pet boa constrictor. We often looked up to see Fred sliding lazily by, always following... |
Late one Saturday I looked toward the evening sun and saw a slender green coil around the trunk of a tree. The sunlit body looked like it was made of satin glass. The only motion I detected was the flicking of a tiny tongue as the snake assessed the meaning of my presence. I froze, as still as the snake. We inspected e... |
The snake won. I decided I needed to start getting ready for the return trip to the city and went to put tools away. When I came back to the tree, the snake was nowhere in sight. I stared at the empty spot on the tree. It looked barren, its beautiful ornamentation gone. |
Not long ago we went to a program about snakes. The speaker, a biology teacher from our small-town high school, brought several living snakes. All of them had been captured in the Ozark forest. After his talk and demonstration, he offered to give the nonpoisonous snakes to children in the audience who would promise to ... |
A forest of hands reached up eagerly. As I watched him hand a little girl her prize ... a slender, glass-like green snake ... I suddenly pictured my green snake, motionless against the fading sunlight. |
The emotion that struck me was not horror, but awe, and yes, love for this beautiful creature. |
Once more I was startled by my feelings about snakes, but this time I knew that they were natural and right. There was no more horror. The enmity was gone! |
Courthouse snakes give workers the creeps in Miss. |
A spokesman for the Missouri IRS has one message for Missourians filing their taxes before the April 15th deadline: to protect your tax information and don’t become a victim of identity theft. |
With the tax return deadline a little over two months away, Missouri IRS spokesman Michael Devine says tax time is the time of year when criminals will try to steal your identity so they can file a tax return in your name. Devine says one thing to keep in mind to prevent identity theft is that the IRS will never contac... |
Devine says if there’s a concern the letter could be fake, to call the IRS and ask if they are trying to get in touch with you. “The people at our call site will know and you may have just avoided having your tax information stolen,” he says. |
Devine says cases of identity theft could take months to solve and are some of the hardest cases the IRS has to work with. |
Portland, Or. – The last of four suspects involved in the 1995 death of 24 year old Darrin Ezell was sentenced to nine years today for manslaughter and robbery. Ezell was shot and killed in his home at SE 93rd and Ramona. Two children were inside the home, but were not hurt. |
Selwyn Stafford apologized to the family and said if he could turn back the clock, he would. Andrea Baker was Ezell’s girlfriend. She spoke at today’s sentencing and said it’s been a long time and that today was the first time she’s heard anyone say they’re guilty. Ezell’s father, George Banks also spoke. He called his... |
In 2012, Cold Case Homicide Unit Detectives with Portland Police reviewed the case and developed new leads in the investigation. Stafford’s brother, Adrian and two other men pled guilty two years ago. |
IN the end, all the pre-match predictions proved to be spot-on. |
Sir Alex Ferguson tempted fate by saying this fixture looked a bit too easy when you assessed the statistics; Roy Hodgson admitted his Fulham team needed a miracle, while Arsene Wenger described Manchester United as the “untouchables”. |
None of them was proved wrong as United stretched their lead at the top of the Premier League to five points with as comfortable a win as they have enjoyed this season. |
And it could yet be eight points by Saturday evening if they beat Blackburn ahead of Liverpool’s Sunday game with Manchester City. |
Rovers boss Sam Allardyce was in the VIP seats no doubt trying to work out a way of stopping United as they cruised to a ninth straight league win. |
Paul Scholes, Dimitar Berbatov and Wayne Rooney – with his first touch after coming on as a substitute – netted the goals. And Edwin Van der Sar did not have a save to make as he stretched his clean-sheet run to 1,302 minutes. |
Scholes’ effort, a volley from Michael Carrick’s corner, was reminiscent of his spectacular effort at Bradford in 2000. Incredibly, it was also his first league goal for 18 months. |
As expected Ferguson continued the squad rotation policy that has kept United in the hunt for an unprecedented quadruple. All his big guns were back, with Rooney on the bench a month after suffering the first hamstring injury of his career. |
Only two teams, West Brom and Middlesbrough, have scored fewer goals than Fulham in the Premier League this season so their hopes of ending United’s remarkable clean-sheet run looked slim. |
Fulham won the toss and forced United to kick towards the Stretford End but that proved to be their only success as the leaders flew out of the blocks looking for an early kill. |
And they got it after only 12 minutes thanks to a spectacular effort from Scholes – and an equally bad handling error by Mark Schwarzer. |
Carrick played a corner direct to Scholes, standing 25 yards out, and his superbly struck volley bounced a yard in front of the Fulham goalkeeper, who appeared to have stopped it only for the ball to squirm off his arms and into the net. |
Bobby Zamora has gone 400 minutes longer without a goal than Edwin Van der Sar has gone without conceding one. But those runs were nearly ended when Zamora climbed well to nod John Pantsil’s cross just wide of the far post. |
It was to prove Fulham’s only threat of the first half. Aaron Hughes cleared a Berbatov shot off the line after a jittery-looking Schwarzer had fumbled Ronaldo’s cross. |
Schwarzer redeemed himself by turning Ronaldo’s shot around the post. Then he tipped a header from the same player over the bar. |
But United kept turning the screw and it was no surprise when Berbatov tapped home an easy goal after half an hour with Schwarzer and Hughes slow to react to the danger presented by John O’Shea’s pass across the face of the goal. Berbatov went close to a second when he rolled a shot wide after Carlos Tevez had played h... |
Tevez had a goal disallowed for offside from Berbatov’s pass and United were in such total command that Fulham’s fans clapped sarcastically when Clint Dempsey chased a pass into the home penalty area. |
The only surprise was that United were not further ahead by the break. Schwarzer kept the score down with a good save from Scholes’ drive and Fulham were relieved when Berbatov had a ‘goal’ chalked off for offside after he had headed home from Ronaldo’s free-kick. |
Ferguson no doubt reminded his players at half-time not to ease their collective foot off the pedal, because this was a great chance to drastically improve their goal difference. |
After a brilliant passing movement, Berbatov forced Schwarzer to tip his drive over the crossbar. |
Ronaldo had given Toni Kallio a torrid time in the first half but switched to the other flank after the break to tease and torment Pantsil. |
And it was not long before Pantsil was booked for hacking down Ronaldo. If Fulham were relieved to see Berbatov taken off, it was short-lived because Rooney came bounding on to a great reception, eager to make amends for missing a month. |
And within two minutes he had scored with his first touch, stealing in behind Fulham’s defence to ram Park Ji-Sung’s low cross into the net. |
As United eased home their fans taunted Rafa Benitez by singing “top of the League, and that’s a fact”. |
MAN UTD (4-4-2): Van der Sar; O’Shea (Evans 62), Ferdinand, Vidic, Evra; Ronaldo, Carrick (Gibson 69), Scholes, Park; Berbatov (Rooney 61), Tevez. Booked: Park. Goals: Scholes 12, Berbatov 30, Rooney 63. |
FULHAM (4-1-4-1): Schwarzer; Pantsil (Dacourt 67), Hangeland, Hughes, Kallio; Baird; Gera (Brown 86), Murphy (Milsom 80), Davies, Dempsey; Zamora. Booked: Pantsil. |
Lionsgate and Starz appear to be talking again about getting together. The studio’s share price rose 5.8% today, while the premium cable network is up 5.5%, after The Street reported that the companies have renewed their merger discussions. |
That provided a boost for Starz shares. Its investors — including Liberty Media’s John Malone, its controlling shareholder — have been eager to see it find a partner to help it compete with rivals including HBO, Showtime and Netflix. |
Lionsgate already owns 14.7% of the voting shares in Starz following a stock swap early last year with Malone. That deal gave him a 3.4% stake in Lionsgate and a seat on its board. Lionsgate also is a part owner of Epix, a three-way joint venture with Viacom and MGM. |
But Lionsgate’s negotiations with Starz quickly ran aground when the studio released an earnings report for the last three months of 2015 that fell far short of Wall Street’s expectations, due in part to disappointing results for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2. |
Since then, Lionsgate shares have appreciated 17.5%, while Starz’s are up 20.4%. |
Many investors believe that a union makes sense. |
Starz could use a dependable content provider. It’s betting heavily on original programming, especially following the expiration this year of its movie distribution deal with Disney. |
A deal also might give Lionsgate a sure outlet for its programming. ItsTV productions include Orange is the New Black, Mad Men, Weeds and Nurse Jackie. |
“A Lionsgate deal continues to be the most logical and probable transaction” for Starz, Macquarie Securities’ Amy Yong said last week. |
But Morgan Stanley’s Ryan Fiftal’s says that, although he doesn’t rule out a transaction, he’s “less bullish” after the Treasury Department adopted rules to deter U.S. companies from merging into foreign ones to take advantage of other countries’ lower corporate tax rates. That could affect Lionsgate, which is incorpor... |
Last week, we looked at the story behind GM's famous Damsels of Design, a group of ten women brought on board by the automaker in the mid-1950s in an attempt to better reach newly powerful female consumers. Unfortunately, America's first all-female design team was short-lived; most of the designers departed by the earl... |
In the late 1950s, Vanderbilt wanted to broaden her experience at GM and joined the Advanced Research Studio, where a diverse group of engineers, designers, human-factors personnel, drafters and material specialists all came together to brainstorm the future of car design. There she worked briefly on the Firebird III c... |
Vanderbilt working on a clay model related to the Autoline research project in 1960—the vehicles developed for GM's futurist transportation study would have had a Chevrolet Corvair engine for city travel and an electric linear motor for automated highway travel. |
From 1963 to 1965, Vanderbilt took a sabbatical from GM to pursue an MFA in metalsmithing at Cranbrook Academy of Art. In her interview with Crippen for the Oral History Project, she admitted that she had hoped studying in the metals department would help her transition to designing for automobile exteriors at GM. It d... |
Vanderbilt spent this time in Chevrolet's Interiors Studio, working on designs for doors, seats, steering wheels and knobs, as well as taking on extra work coordinating color trim for commercial vehicles. By 1972 she finally became chief designer of Chevrolet's Interior Studio, working on small cars like the Nova, the ... |
Vanderbilt's inflatable back support was an early attempt to make automobiles more ergonomic; unfortunately, her innovation was set aside by GM. |
This was the latest installment of our Designing Women series. Be sure to also read our profile of Mimi Vandermolen, an ergonomics pioneer at Ford. |
Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch won’t be fined for his terse media sessions at the Super bowl. |
And Lynch isn’t being fined for his Beast Mode hat. It was an NFL licensee item and was in his team colors. |
Lynch repeatedly said “I’m just here so I won’t get fined,” during Super Bowl Media Day. |
He stayed roughly five minutes before saying it was time for him to go. |
KEVIN DOYLE reckons the pain of watching Birmingham celebrate promotion in front of them can spur Reading on to play-off glory. |
The Royals had a chance to go up automatically last week via a winner-takes-all clash with the Blues but lost 2-1 and saw Alex McLeish’s men pop open champagne that could have been theirs. |
Doyle said: “The experience of seeing them celebrating and hearing the noise from their dressing room was not a nice feeling. We had to swallow that pill, shake their hands, say congratulations and get on with it. |
Reading must take their chances through the lottery of the play-offs, starting at Burnley this evening. |
Republic of Ireland striker Doyle is back from a knee injury and expected to replace Dave Kitson in the starting line-up but Reading have a terrible play-off record, losing two finals and one semi-final, and another failure would surely see 18-goal Doyle leave. |
He said: “The Premier League is massive. You want to play in the top league of whatever country you are in, that was the aim at the start of the season and it’s my aim now. |
“We have another chance with the play-offs. We didn’t take our first two chances as we could have been first or second. |
“We want to have an enjoyable summer looking forward to the Premier League. It’s in our hands so it’s up to us to go and do it. |
COLD SPRING — Cold Spring finally has a new city logo. |
Months after making a call for public entries and narrowing the many entries, City Council members chose the logo this week. |
The result is essentially Cold Spring: a combination of baseball and water. |
It was designed by Abigail Lundstrom of Minneapolis. Lundstrom has family in the Cold Spring area. She told the city she's been coming to Cold Spring for most of her life, and this logo design reminded her of her visits. |
Lundstrom will receive a $500 prize for her efforts. |
City Administrator Brigid Murphy said this logo was chosen in part because of its simplicity and its incorporation of water. |
In May, city officials called on the public to design a new city city. The previous logo had been used since the mid-1980s, Murphy said. |
The city received 61 submissions from about 35 applications, Murphy said. Some submissions had multiple options, so the city received about 90 logo images. |
Planning commission members narrowed the list to five, and council members got to make the final choice. |
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