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Student ambassadors market popular brands on campus [hat]
Flattered that a girl asked you to try out a new restaurant? Think again — she may have been paid to do so.
College campuses like Penn, a marketing mecca for brands that target the 18-to 24-year-old population, have become home to ambassadors for top brands, such as Red Bull, Microsoft and Verizon Wireless.
This fall, at least 10,000 college students are working on hundreds of campuses for various brands, according to a September New York Times article.
Campus Entertainment, the exclusive marketing agency for the National Association for Campus Activities, links big brand names with the big men and women on campus for mutual benefits.
Director of Business Development of Campus Activities Mark Giovino explained how to tap into the network of college students.
"As you look across the advertising spectrum as a whole, [college campuses] are a very challenging market," Giovino explained. To gain access to college students as well as their social networks, Campus Entertainment "looks for students with a finger on the pulse of what's going on" in hiring student promoters.
Campus Entertainment has facilitated the marketing efforts of mtvU - the college-geared branch of MTV Networks — among others on Penn's campus.
College senior Kelly Newman served as a brand ambassador for Vita Coco Coconut Water last year and said "it was a great marketing and product promotion experience."
College sophomore Lucie Read is a brand ambassador for Salute the Brave, a clothing company that donates hats to soldiers overseas for customer purchases.
Unlike Newman, Read does not receive monetary compensation for her work. She said it is her passion for the brand of Salute the Brave that serves as her motivation.
"I just really like the idea of the company," she explained. "It was a way for me to show my support and be patriotic myself."
Read uses word of mouth and Facebook to promote the brand.
Giovino concurred that word of mouth and peer-to-peer conversation are the best strategies for these ambassadors.
Newman was "in charge of coordinating events on campus for the product to sponsor, distributing free samples, promoting the brand and educating people about what it was."
Yet many students feel bombarded by the advertisements surrounding them on campus.
College junior Talia Goldberg said that she does not appreciate the constant notifications from brand ambassadors at Penn in certain circumstances.
"I am bothered by it when the people soliciting are clearly sending impersonal, generic, mass emails, which definitely happens," she said.
However, if Goldberg sees the solicitation as relevant to her and could potentially offer her a "cool opportunity," then she thinks it's a good idea.
Read said she has not been "extremely aggressive" about promoting sales. "I've made it an open option for people to buy or support, but I'm not offended at all if my friends don't buy it."
Giovino stressed that marketing approaches needed to be "authentic and real."
"As we look to recruit the ideal student promoter, that's the most important part: to know the brand, use the brand and have a passion for the brand, or it fails before it starts," he added.
College campuses like Penn, a marketing mecca for brands that target the 18-to 24-year-old population, have become home to ambassadors for top brands, such as Red Bull, Microsoft and Verizon Wireless.
This fall, at least 10,000 college students are working on hundreds of campuses for various brands, according to a September New York Times article.
Campus Entertainment, the exclusive marketing agency for the National Association for Campus Activities, links big brand names with the big men and women on campus for mutual benefits.
Director of Business Development of Campus Activities Mark Giovino explained how to tap into the network of college students.
"As you look across the advertising spectrum as a whole, [college campuses] are a very challenging market," Giovino explained. To gain access to college students as well as their social networks, Campus Entertainment "looks for students with a finger on the pulse of what's going on" in hiring student promoters.
Campus Entertainment has facilitated the marketing efforts of mtvU - the college-geared branch of MTV Networks — among others on Penn's campus.
College senior Kelly Newman served as a brand ambassador for Vita Coco Coconut Water last year and said "it was a great marketing and product promotion experience."
College sophomore Lucie Read is a brand ambassador for Salute the Brave, a clothing company that donates hats to soldiers overseas for customer purchases.
Unlike Newman, Read does not receive monetary compensation for her work. She said it is her passion for the brand of Salute the Brave that serves as her motivation.
"I just really like the idea of the company," she explained. "It was a way for me to show my support and be patriotic myself."
Read uses word of mouth and Facebook to promote the brand.
Giovino concurred that word of mouth and peer-to-peer conversation are the best strategies for these ambassadors.
Newman was "in charge of coordinating events on campus for the product to sponsor, distributing free samples, promoting the brand and educating people about what it was."
Yet many students feel bombarded by the advertisements surrounding them on campus.
College junior Talia Goldberg said that she does not appreciate the constant notifications from brand ambassadors at Penn in certain circumstances.
"I am bothered by it when the people soliciting are clearly sending impersonal, generic, mass emails, which definitely happens," she said.
However, if Goldberg sees the solicitation as relevant to her and could potentially offer her a "cool opportunity," then she thinks it's a good idea.
Read said she has not been "extremely aggressive" about promoting sales. "I've made it an open option for people to buy or support, but I'm not offended at all if my friends don't buy it."
Giovino stressed that marketing approaches needed to be "authentic and real."
"As we look to recruit the ideal student promoter, that's the most important part: to know the brand, use the brand and have a passion for the brand, or it fails before it starts," he added.
'Extreme' TV in Bastrop County as local firefighter gets picked for new home [Tag Heuer watches]
SMITHVILLE — Many things raced through Mizzy Zdroj's head when "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" host and designer Ty Pennington knocked on the door Wednesday morning to tell the volunteer firefighter that in a week, she will be getting a new house.
"'Overwhelming' comes to mind," said Zdroj, whose lost her home while she was fighting the wildfires that began Labor Day weekend.
Thanks to the ABC show and Bastrop homebuilder EFC Custom Homes, the member of the Heart of the Pines Volunteer Fire Department is getting a $250,000, 2,500-square-foot home to replace the 724-square-foot recycled bungalow that burned .
"When they came to the door, I had to ask myself if this was happening. My kids will be in a home for Christmas," she said.
The Zdrojs are temporarily staying nearby in the guest house of fellow firefighters. Before the fire, the Zdrojs were subsistence farmers, raising their own vegetables. Chickens provided eggs. They ate rabbit, chickens and deer. The family had planned to move into an 8-by-20 shed on their 7-acre property on Cottletown Road this weekend.
Surrounded by media, neighbors, 85 "Extreme Makeover" staffers and various volunteers, Zdroj, husband Chris, 8-year-old twins Ash and Raist
lin and grown daughter Whitney Niemann were blown away by the attention. After the media event, the family was flown to New York for a free vacation.
When they return on Wednesday, their house will be finished. "Before long, we'll be canning pickles, gathering eggs and planting a garden," Mizzy Zdroj said. "There are lots of changes in our lives, but we have a lifestyle that we want to pass on to our kids."
Eric Christophe, president of EFC Custom Homes, said he'll be done in 4 1/2 days. "Normally, a house like this takes 60 to 90 days to build, but we have 100 men working on it plus all the community volunteers," he said.
George Verschoor, the show's executive producer, said more is in store. "We also have something planned for the Heart of the Pines Volunteer Fire Department," he said.
"'Overwhelming' comes to mind," said Zdroj, whose lost her home while she was fighting the wildfires that began Labor Day weekend.
Thanks to the ABC show and Bastrop homebuilder EFC Custom Homes, the member of the Heart of the Pines Volunteer Fire Department is getting a $250,000, 2,500-square-foot home to replace the 724-square-foot recycled bungalow that burned .
"When they came to the door, I had to ask myself if this was happening. My kids will be in a home for Christmas," she said.
The Zdrojs are temporarily staying nearby in the guest house of fellow firefighters. Before the fire, the Zdrojs were subsistence farmers, raising their own vegetables. Chickens provided eggs. They ate rabbit, chickens and deer. The family had planned to move into an 8-by-20 shed on their 7-acre property on Cottletown Road this weekend.
Surrounded by media, neighbors, 85 "Extreme Makeover" staffers and various volunteers, Zdroj, husband Chris, 8-year-old twins Ash and Raist
lin and grown daughter Whitney Niemann were blown away by the attention. After the media event, the family was flown to New York for a free vacation.
When they return on Wednesday, their house will be finished. "Before long, we'll be canning pickles, gathering eggs and planting a garden," Mizzy Zdroj said. "There are lots of changes in our lives, but we have a lifestyle that we want to pass on to our kids."
Eric Christophe, president of EFC Custom Homes, said he'll be done in 4 1/2 days. "Normally, a house like this takes 60 to 90 days to build, but we have 100 men working on it plus all the community volunteers," he said.
George Verschoor, the show's executive producer, said more is in store. "We also have something planned for the Heart of the Pines Volunteer Fire Department," he said.
Active Argyle BIA swings into action [hat]
Since a one-time $50,000 start-up grant from city council in May, the Argyle Business Improvement Association has been active in the east London neighbourhood.
With further financial support from the Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities, they have set up a new website, an office at 1815 Dundas Street and have hired two new staff members to help with public relations and administration.
They had a summer student in the office recently too and executive director Nancy McSloy, who approached city council to get the association off the ground initially, said the association has been a successful networking tool for east end businesses so far.
"The businesses are really responding to what we're doing," said McSloy, adding over 50 businesses are participating in networking events hosted by the association. "We're working on membership and we're really happy with the partnerships we're creating, not just with businesses, but the community in general."
The association hasn't been afraid of raising their voices to local politicians either. They are one of the main proponents behind an idea to add surveillance cameras on Dundas Street, an issue still being considered at city hall.
"The businesses are very much on board," McSloy said. "It's more of a preventative maintenance."
The cameras would target crime hotspots the association has noticed on Dundas Street between Highbury Avenue and Carlyle Drive.
"When you have drugs or prostitution, they normally gather in places … anywhere there's a phone booth, maybe a bar, a coffee shop or even a variety store where they can go in and out quickly," said Rose Martin, a staff member with the association, adding it's about finding areas cameras will help prevent crime.
In an effort to promote local business and spruce up streetscapes, the association is borrowing an idea from Dorchester and considering banners featuring area businesses that can be seen from the road.
"They are very personal," Martin said. "And that's what we wanted to do here, make it more personal."
Right now the business association is in the midst of some charity work in east London too, recently launching their first Cold Hands/Warm Hearts drive. They are encouraging Londoners to donate winter mitts, hats and scarves to decorate a Christmas tree in their office. After December 21, the clothing will be donated to Keeping Kids Warm, a start-up local charity that knits and delivers the winter items to kids in London who would otherwise not have any this season.
Donations can be made at the association's office between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.
"We're already off to a good start," said McSloy. "Especially in the schools, there're a lot of kids that probably go to school without mittens."
And approaching its one-year anniversary in the spring, becoming an official business improvement area in London will be on the table — but that's not the main goal, according to McSloy.
"The end goal is to keep doing what we're doing," she said. "Keep creating partnerships, strengthening and building bridges."
With further financial support from the Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities, they have set up a new website, an office at 1815 Dundas Street and have hired two new staff members to help with public relations and administration.
They had a summer student in the office recently too and executive director Nancy McSloy, who approached city council to get the association off the ground initially, said the association has been a successful networking tool for east end businesses so far.
"The businesses are really responding to what we're doing," said McSloy, adding over 50 businesses are participating in networking events hosted by the association. "We're working on membership and we're really happy with the partnerships we're creating, not just with businesses, but the community in general."
The association hasn't been afraid of raising their voices to local politicians either. They are one of the main proponents behind an idea to add surveillance cameras on Dundas Street, an issue still being considered at city hall.
"The businesses are very much on board," McSloy said. "It's more of a preventative maintenance."
The cameras would target crime hotspots the association has noticed on Dundas Street between Highbury Avenue and Carlyle Drive.
"When you have drugs or prostitution, they normally gather in places … anywhere there's a phone booth, maybe a bar, a coffee shop or even a variety store where they can go in and out quickly," said Rose Martin, a staff member with the association, adding it's about finding areas cameras will help prevent crime.
In an effort to promote local business and spruce up streetscapes, the association is borrowing an idea from Dorchester and considering banners featuring area businesses that can be seen from the road.
"They are very personal," Martin said. "And that's what we wanted to do here, make it more personal."
Right now the business association is in the midst of some charity work in east London too, recently launching their first Cold Hands/Warm Hearts drive. They are encouraging Londoners to donate winter mitts, hats and scarves to decorate a Christmas tree in their office. After December 21, the clothing will be donated to Keeping Kids Warm, a start-up local charity that knits and delivers the winter items to kids in London who would otherwise not have any this season.
Donations can be made at the association's office between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.
"We're already off to a good start," said McSloy. "Especially in the schools, there're a lot of kids that probably go to school without mittens."
And approaching its one-year anniversary in the spring, becoming an official business improvement area in London will be on the table — but that's not the main goal, according to McSloy.
"The end goal is to keep doing what we're doing," she said. "Keep creating partnerships, strengthening and building bridges."
New CDs in stores this week [replica watches]
The Black Keys, "El Camino" (Nonesuch). Akron, Ohio, rock duo that has lately been packing large venues (and has moved to Nashville) nails down some more gritty action on seventh full album.
Chevelle, "Hats Off to the Bull" (Epic). Sixth studio album from Illinois trio sticks with riff-heavy hard rock.
The Fall, "Ersatz G.B." (Cherry Red/MVD). One of the classic punk era's first "postpunk"-style bands releases its 29th album, featuring, of course, Mark E. Smith's distinctive mutter.
Dia Frampton, "Red" (Universal Republic). Runner-up from "The Voice," the popular TV talent contest, issues first album with evidently wide range, considering both hip-hop's Kid Cudi and contemporary country's Blake Shelton show up on it.
KoRn, "The Path of Totality" (Roadrunner). Veteran band of the "nu-metal" scene puts out 10th studio album, supposedly an experimental work assisted by dubstep and electronica producers.
Nils Lofgren, "Old School" (Vision). Guitarist from Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band takes solo spotlight with new material for first time in five years, with help from Sam Moore and Paul Rodgers and with a dedication to the late Clarence Clemons, another E Street alumnus.
The Maine, "Pioneer" (Action Theory/Warner). Arizona pop-rock band follows its major-label debut with a disc that seeks to find different musical directions.
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, "The Magic of Youth" (Big Rig/Redeye). Band that more or less pioneered ska-rock in the 1990s keeps skanking to the beat on its second new album since a long hiatus during most of the last decade.
Gary Numan, "Dead Son Rising" (Machine Music). Post-apocalyptic techno and plenty of atmosphere from the former Tubeway Army frontman who had an iconic 1980s hit with "Cars."
The Roots, "Undun" (Island Def Jam). Philly hip-hop band (underscore that last word) proves, yet again, that it's much more than Jimmy Fallon's late-night backing group with a fierce concept album.
Robin Thicke, "Love After War" (Interscope). Alan's singer son continues to get his loverman persona on with album that nods to classic bedroom-minded R&B music.
T-Pain, "rEVOLVEr" (RCA). Florida rapper and singer issues fourth album, featuring guest turns from Chris Brown, Pitbull and (inevitably) Lil Wayne.
Amy Winehouse, "Lioness: Hidden Treasures" (Universal Republic). After her especially untimely death in July, troubled British soul singer gets a 12-track third album made up of alternate versions of hits, unreleased recordings and a couple of brand-new songs.
Chevelle, "Hats Off to the Bull" (Epic). Sixth studio album from Illinois trio sticks with riff-heavy hard rock.
The Fall, "Ersatz G.B." (Cherry Red/MVD). One of the classic punk era's first "postpunk"-style bands releases its 29th album, featuring, of course, Mark E. Smith's distinctive mutter.
Dia Frampton, "Red" (Universal Republic). Runner-up from "The Voice," the popular TV talent contest, issues first album with evidently wide range, considering both hip-hop's Kid Cudi and contemporary country's Blake Shelton show up on it.
KoRn, "The Path of Totality" (Roadrunner). Veteran band of the "nu-metal" scene puts out 10th studio album, supposedly an experimental work assisted by dubstep and electronica producers.
Nils Lofgren, "Old School" (Vision). Guitarist from Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band takes solo spotlight with new material for first time in five years, with help from Sam Moore and Paul Rodgers and with a dedication to the late Clarence Clemons, another E Street alumnus.
The Maine, "Pioneer" (Action Theory/Warner). Arizona pop-rock band follows its major-label debut with a disc that seeks to find different musical directions.
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, "The Magic of Youth" (Big Rig/Redeye). Band that more or less pioneered ska-rock in the 1990s keeps skanking to the beat on its second new album since a long hiatus during most of the last decade.
Gary Numan, "Dead Son Rising" (Machine Music). Post-apocalyptic techno and plenty of atmosphere from the former Tubeway Army frontman who had an iconic 1980s hit with "Cars."
The Roots, "Undun" (Island Def Jam). Philly hip-hop band (underscore that last word) proves, yet again, that it's much more than Jimmy Fallon's late-night backing group with a fierce concept album.
Robin Thicke, "Love After War" (Interscope). Alan's singer son continues to get his loverman persona on with album that nods to classic bedroom-minded R&B music.
T-Pain, "rEVOLVEr" (RCA). Florida rapper and singer issues fourth album, featuring guest turns from Chris Brown, Pitbull and (inevitably) Lil Wayne.
Amy Winehouse, "Lioness: Hidden Treasures" (Universal Republic). After her especially untimely death in July, troubled British soul singer gets a 12-track third album made up of alternate versions of hits, unreleased recordings and a couple of brand-new songs.
Blanchett sparkles at Louis Vuitton [replica watches]
There's not much that would stop Cate Blanchett from being the most interesting thing in a room, but at yesterday's Louis Vuitton Maison launch in Sydney a series of life-sized crocodiles, kangaroos and koalas made entirely out of LV bags nearly managed the feat.
The who's who of fashion media from around the Asia-Pacific congregated on the stunning three-storey heritage building on George Street to catch a glimpse of the film and stage star, who emerged at the end of a Q&A with the company's top executives for a ribbon-cutting ceremony, posing for photographs wearing an exquisite white dress from the brand's spring-summer 2012 collection.
But of almost equal fascination were artist Billie Achilleos' leather-good animals, dotted around the vast, marble-floored former bank and attracting almost as many photographers as Blanchett, who is currently performing in Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Gross Und Klein (Big And Small).
However, it was left to Louis Vuitton chairman Yves Carcelle, Oceania chief executive Philip Corne and Asia-Pacific president Jean-Baptiste Debains to field questions from the press, most of which focused on how the luxury goods market is faring in the current economic climate.
"The situation in Europe is not great, but we are finding there is still a demand for beautifully made products," Carcelle said.
"Our customers still want to buy a nice pair of shoes, a wonderful dress."
The Maison, only the 13th in the world and the first for the Asia-Pacific region, takes Louis Vuitton's luxury aesthetic to the next level, offering made-to-order shoe and belt services for men and personalised handbag services for women.
The Maison launch celebrations kicked on into the evening with an in-store cocktail party gathering a well-dressed mix of celebrities including Miranda Kerr, Lara Bingle, Delta Goodrem and Jess Gomes, all dressed in new-season Louis Vuitton.
The who's who of fashion media from around the Asia-Pacific congregated on the stunning three-storey heritage building on George Street to catch a glimpse of the film and stage star, who emerged at the end of a Q&A with the company's top executives for a ribbon-cutting ceremony, posing for photographs wearing an exquisite white dress from the brand's spring-summer 2012 collection.
But of almost equal fascination were artist Billie Achilleos' leather-good animals, dotted around the vast, marble-floored former bank and attracting almost as many photographers as Blanchett, who is currently performing in Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Gross Und Klein (Big And Small).
However, it was left to Louis Vuitton chairman Yves Carcelle, Oceania chief executive Philip Corne and Asia-Pacific president Jean-Baptiste Debains to field questions from the press, most of which focused on how the luxury goods market is faring in the current economic climate.
"The situation in Europe is not great, but we are finding there is still a demand for beautifully made products," Carcelle said.
"Our customers still want to buy a nice pair of shoes, a wonderful dress."
The Maison, only the 13th in the world and the first for the Asia-Pacific region, takes Louis Vuitton's luxury aesthetic to the next level, offering made-to-order shoe and belt services for men and personalised handbag services for women.
The Maison launch celebrations kicked on into the evening with an in-store cocktail party gathering a well-dressed mix of celebrities including Miranda Kerr, Lara Bingle, Delta Goodrem and Jess Gomes, all dressed in new-season Louis Vuitton.
Gilbert girl diagnosed with brain tumor, family prepares for 'Crazy' toy drive [Fitted Hat]
As she and her Gilbert family reeled with the trauma, they looked around at other children in the Phoenix Children's Hospital cancer ward and decided to help.
Her father, Aaron, a pastor at Chandler's Cornerstone Christian Fellowship, and mother, Holly, realized that though Christmas that year would be like no other they'd experienced, they could make it special by giving to others.
"That first Christmas started with our own disappointment that our family might not be together as Kate underwent chemotherapy and her sister and brother wouldn't be able to visit due to hospital flu-season restrictions," said Pastor McRae. "We decided to do something to replace that discouragement and asked Kate's prayer warriors to join us in making the day fun and hopeful for those kids who were hospitalized during Christmas."
With Kate's input, the McRaes named the toy drive Kate's Crazy Cool Christmas and posted it on their CaringBridge page and their newly created prayforkate.com website.
The response of more than 1,000 toy and gift donations was both unexpected and overwhelming. Not only did the children occupying the oncology floor receive gift-wrapped packages, but the largesse spilled over to other PCH children, the outpatient oncology clinic, and another hospital's pediatric ward.
Seeing other children's smiles at receiving the Christmas gifts gave Kate a sense of joy, recalled her mother Holly.
Last year, four days before Christmas, Kate, her parents, siblings Olivia and Will, now 9 and 6, and friends delivered thousands of gifts and an equal number of gift cards to PCH oncology patients. The gifts poured in from throughout the U.S. and the world as word spread via blogs and prayer chains.
Holly McRae recalled the reaction of a 10-year-old patient who also was fighting a brain tumor and blind from surgery, who asked for button-down shirts and anything country. He received a cowboy hat, a guitar, an iPod and more than 40 country CDs, many signed by the artists.
"It was fun to see him revel in a little spoiling during a very challenging fight," she said. "One mom told me quietly she didn't know what she was going to do for her daughter this Christmas; there were no funds left for that. She left smiling with a packed-out car. Not the cure we all hope for but a momentary distraction from a lifestyle that can be overwhelming at times."
Though Kate, now 7, learned her Nov. 21 MRI showed no visible cancer cells, she is still undergoing chemotherapy .
This will be her second year celebrating Christmas at home, but her desire to share with fellow oncology patients, and other children hospitalized during the holidays, continues.
And so, the third annual Kate's Crazy Cool Christmas is under way.
There is a wide variety of gift suggestions and requests at www.signup genius.com/go/requested1/238. Some are simple wishes like gift cards, games or sketchbooks; others more specific such as a digital camera, eight-person tent or Ed Hardy Perfume set.
McRae friend and fellow organizer Julie Dodd of Gilbert said this year there are more sports-clothing requests - including Diamondbacks, Phoenix Suns, Coyotes, Minnesota Twins, Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys shirts and sweatshirts.
Larger items, such as the iPod touch, are in short supply. The McRays and volunteers try to match gifts with children's specific requests.
Her father, Aaron, a pastor at Chandler's Cornerstone Christian Fellowship, and mother, Holly, realized that though Christmas that year would be like no other they'd experienced, they could make it special by giving to others.
"That first Christmas started with our own disappointment that our family might not be together as Kate underwent chemotherapy and her sister and brother wouldn't be able to visit due to hospital flu-season restrictions," said Pastor McRae. "We decided to do something to replace that discouragement and asked Kate's prayer warriors to join us in making the day fun and hopeful for those kids who were hospitalized during Christmas."
With Kate's input, the McRaes named the toy drive Kate's Crazy Cool Christmas and posted it on their CaringBridge page and their newly created prayforkate.com website.
The response of more than 1,000 toy and gift donations was both unexpected and overwhelming. Not only did the children occupying the oncology floor receive gift-wrapped packages, but the largesse spilled over to other PCH children, the outpatient oncology clinic, and another hospital's pediatric ward.
Seeing other children's smiles at receiving the Christmas gifts gave Kate a sense of joy, recalled her mother Holly.
Last year, four days before Christmas, Kate, her parents, siblings Olivia and Will, now 9 and 6, and friends delivered thousands of gifts and an equal number of gift cards to PCH oncology patients. The gifts poured in from throughout the U.S. and the world as word spread via blogs and prayer chains.
Holly McRae recalled the reaction of a 10-year-old patient who also was fighting a brain tumor and blind from surgery, who asked for button-down shirts and anything country. He received a cowboy hat, a guitar, an iPod and more than 40 country CDs, many signed by the artists.
"It was fun to see him revel in a little spoiling during a very challenging fight," she said. "One mom told me quietly she didn't know what she was going to do for her daughter this Christmas; there were no funds left for that. She left smiling with a packed-out car. Not the cure we all hope for but a momentary distraction from a lifestyle that can be overwhelming at times."
Though Kate, now 7, learned her Nov. 21 MRI showed no visible cancer cells, she is still undergoing chemotherapy .
This will be her second year celebrating Christmas at home, but her desire to share with fellow oncology patients, and other children hospitalized during the holidays, continues.
And so, the third annual Kate's Crazy Cool Christmas is under way.
There is a wide variety of gift suggestions and requests at www.signup genius.com/go/requested1/238. Some are simple wishes like gift cards, games or sketchbooks; others more specific such as a digital camera, eight-person tent or Ed Hardy Perfume set.
McRae friend and fellow organizer Julie Dodd of Gilbert said this year there are more sports-clothing requests - including Diamondbacks, Phoenix Suns, Coyotes, Minnesota Twins, Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys shirts and sweatshirts.
Larger items, such as the iPod touch, are in short supply. The McRays and volunteers try to match gifts with children's specific requests.
Otherwise occupied: What price revolution? [watches]
Every time a citizen with good intentions provokes a police-state reaction from the local authorities, the angels smile and society moves one millimeter closer to salvation. It doesn't take much to provoke them. Just down the road in liberal, affable Chapel Hill, where I lived for many years without experiencing police brutality or much civil disobedience, a reporter with a camera recorded steroidal officers in full SWAT-team battle gear, pistols and assault rifles at the ready, charging an unarmed encampment of self-described anarchists who had "liberated" a vacant building. A few seconds later the reporter was arrested, handcuffed and forced to lie facedown on the pavement with the unfortunate anarchists, who had neither resisted nor threatened any crime greater than trespassing. Amazed bystanders chanted "Shame! Shame!"
Shame, indeed. Attempts by the police chief and the mayor to defend this preposterous cinematic overkill only added to the embarrassment. They claim that the assault rifles were not aimed at the protesters, but the photograph is there for everyone to see that they're lying. Police attacked without warning due, they claimed, to "the known risks associated with anarchist groups," as if America has been much plagued by anarchist violence. If some protester had made a nervous grab for his cellphone or his fountain pen, would we have had a bullet-riddled (unarmed) corpse lying on Franklin Street? For that frozen moment caught by the beleaguered reporter's camera, downtown Chapel Hill looked like the streets of Cairo or Damascus.
This is North Carolina, where we like to believe that our law enforcement officers still emulate Sheriff Andy Taylor of the canonical Andy Griffith Show. What would Andy have done in the same situation, instead of recruiting 15 commandos in riot gear to arrest seven unarmed trespassers? He would, of course, have sent over Aunt Bee with a plate of fresh brownies, and then amiably advised the young people that they could have breakfast tomorrow at home, or with him at the jailhouse—their choice. And he would have kept his excitable deputy Barney Fife, with his one bullet, as far from the crime scene as possible.
Real life was never much like Mayberry R.F.D. But Chapel Hill is nothing much like Oakland or Manhattan, where a wild variety of dangerous characters might be camping out with the idealists. I'm sympathetic to the plight of police officers, who are—thanks to America's psychotic gun cult and its captive legislators, next to suicide bombers, the craziest people left on Earth—facing the Streets of Laredo every day on the job.
Last week in Wake County, a deputy answering a domestic disturbance call took a shotgun blast in the chest and was saved only by his bulletproof vest. In the NRA's Second Amendment Nation, any gray-haired lady tending her philodendrons may be packing a Glock. But in a temperate zone like Chapel Hill, someone in authority ought to be experienced and prudent enough to realize that college-town demonstrators are a fairly harmless lot compared to wife beaters, or even Tea Party soldiers whose T-shirts say "God, Guns, Babies."
"Anarchist" is one of those alien-sounding words that make simple people very nervous. Sometimes I wish that protesters would merely state their grievances and leave all those isms, those media-tortured labels, at home. It only takes one nervous rifleman, maybe one who grew up hearing about depraved radicals and atheists on right-wing radio, to panic and trigger Kent State, or Tahrir Square. With the Occupy Wall Street movement now spreading to hundreds of cities and campuses, and mounting pressure on thousands of defensive and unsophisticated police officers, it would be the safe and civilized decision to leave those assault rifles back in their lockers—at least until someone spots a demonstrator carrying one.
The liberators of the derelict auto dealership in Chapel Hill were acting independently of the local "Occupy" encampment, which disavowed their action while acknowledging their affiliation with the movement. But the Occupiers, whose critique of America emphasizes its mindless materialism, are no doubt delighted to point out what a sleepy Southern town full of Ph.D.s will do to protect abandoned property. Never mind the rhetoric. Just look at the picture.
Occupy 6, Chapel Hill 0. No need to kick the extra point. Other critical points for the movement were scored at UC Davis, where passive protesters were callously and viciously pepper-sprayed, and at UC Berkeley, where Robert Hass, a former U.S. poet laureate, described a cordon of Alameda County deputies with billy clubs smashing students and faculty indiscriminately. Hass himself was hit in the ribs and arms, his wife was knocked to the ground, and a Wordsworth scholar was dragged across the grass by her long humanist hair.
Idiot force has been deployed against Occupy at dozens of its tent cities, although assault rifles have yet to appear anywhere other than Chapel Hill. Every image of belligerent overreaction to a nonviolent protest—diligently videotaped, instantly online—is a victory for this promising experiment in civil disobedience, which in the digital age commands an audience inconceivable to Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.
But those great martyrs of nonviolence, who succeeded in spite of the violence they failed to survive, laid down the rules of this game. It's about self-control: You conquer by conquering yourself. Your enemy is exposed, isolated and in the end defeated by his brutality and lack of restraint.
That's all to the good, unless those are your ribs, your hair. The other lesson young rebels learn rapidly is that revolutions, in the words of one of Chapel Hill's declared anarchists, "are not like a dinner party." Civil disobedience is no walk in the park. It involves serious physical risks. There are sometimes martyrs. Pressed sufficiently, even the most benign authority will usually show its fangs. Television deceives. Was there ever a real-life lawman like Sheriff Andy Taylor, who never met a malefactor he didn't like? Or even one like Marshal Matt Dillon, who was always fair and avoided violence if he could? It's not a great secret that most people who seek authority, or defend it, fall toward the controlling side of the psychological spectrum. They tend to prize order and orderly citizens, an equilibrium that civil disobedience so rudely violates. "Disturbing the peace" is a punishable offense with deep historical roots.
Disturb their peace and they will bite you, they will beat you. They might shoot you. Expect no smiles, no brownies. You make a stern, life-altering commitment when you take your grievances to the street. I had to grin at an e-mail an old friend forwarded to me, from his daughter in New York, who joined last week's night march across the Brooklyn Bridge to reclaim Zuccotti Park. "Being a revolutionary is cold work," she reports.
It's cold, dangerous and not always rewarding. Failed movements make cynics of young people who embrace a cause with everything they have and see it come to nothing. My generation, the one that marched against segregation and the war in Vietnam, can point to major achievements and major disappointments. On our worst days we feel that we, as a generation, are a major disappointment. It's a right-wing canard that the tie-dyed Aquarians all ended up in pinstripes—true Jerry Rubins are rare—but how did the egalitarian dreams of the '60s decay into the grim corporate feudalism that Occupy Wall Street so quixotically confronts? At what point, exactly, was it clear that greed had trumped altruism and cash had devoured representative democracy?
If this is a revolution we're watching, perhaps it's not so much class warfare as generational warfare. The most deluded members of my generation join the mock-revolution they call the tea party, funded by fascist billionaires, scripted by the usual talk-radio gargoyles and apparently so stunted by the brain plaque of advancing age that it imagines the government is its archenemy, to the great amusement of the corporate leviathans who operate that government like a hand puppet.
This cruel farce draws most of its recruits from my own demographic group, and I'm ashamed. Who knows why expired testosterone leads to big guns, silly hats and prayer breakfasts? The late George Kennan, a brilliant diplomat and historian but a disturbing elitist, once espoused limiting the vote to white males. In America's best interests, I'd be willing to see that Kennan doctrine reversed: Take the vote away from white men, or at least all white men over 45. See what that would do for the GOP. Naturally, I hope the young people in charge would make exceptions for me and a couple of my friends.
The truth, in spite of all the graybeards who keep running for president, is that our time is over. If I slept out on the ground my arthritis would cripple me. And in all honesty, though I joined a march or two in my time, passive resistance was never one of my strengths. If some storm trooper with a truncheon steamrollered my wife the way Hass' wife was steamrollered, I'd get his badge number and probably burn his house down. It's an ethnic tic. You probably saw Braveheart.
It's up to them now, the green, clean, unexpected revolutionaries one Manhattan office worker called "those terrific kids in the park." It's up to you, whoever you are, and encouraging polls indicate that most Americans don't buy the predictable smears from the right-wing coven, the ones that dismiss you as spoiled children of privilege who would rather demonstrate than work. If our self-esteem is based on the noxiousness of our enemies—I cherish mine—you should all be swollen with pride. You've been called "fascists" by Karl Rove, a criminal thug who belongs on Cellblock B instead of Fox News. Ann Coulter claims that America views you with "hilarity and revulsion," which pretty accurately sums up her own impact and her career. "Go get a bath right after you get a job," snarls Newt Gingrich, an influence-peddler who's had no legitimate job for 15 years and exists only to give the word "hypocrisy" a human face.
My sympathies are obvious. What you in the tents can accomplish remains to be seen. But what I think I see, through the media fog of polarized America, is the return of the full-fledged idealists (as opposed to single-issue idealists) who seemed to go underground around 1980, possibly because the mass media abandoned them during the mudslide of self-celebration that began with Reaganism and culminated in Facebook.
I say God bless them, and God will if he still has any investment in the United States of America. The Goliath they challenge has crushed a thousand Davids. The good news is that "the kids" are right on target. Their diagnosis is bull's-eye correct, and the patient is critical. For this country to survive, it must find saner ways to pursue and multiply wealth, and find them quickly. The cannibal capitalism that produced a Goldman Sachs and a Bernie Madoff is subhuman and obscene. There's no form of government more inherently offensive than plutocracy—only theocracy comes close. When a citizen comes of age in a plutocracy, he has no moral choice but to slay Pluto or die trying.
The history of American plutocracy is shockingly simple. The Industrial Revolution fueled the metamorphosis of capitalism into a ravenous monster that devoured resources, landscapes and human beings on a scale no wars or natural disasters had ever approached. The wealth generated by this devastation created colossal corporations and financial operations far more powerful than elected governments; long ago the individuals who controlled these giants learned that it was cost-effective to buy up the politicians and turn governments into virtual subsidiaries. Along with the unprecedented wealth of the new ruling class came two protective myths, transparently false but widely accepted: one, that the feeble, compliant federal government was somehow the enemy of free enterprise; two, the outrageous trickle-down theory, which urged us to choke the rich with riches in the hope that they would disgorge a few crumbs for the peasants.
Investment banks and hedge funds were designed as perfect engines for multiplying the assets of the affluent. The Wall Street elite of the 20th century—Masters of the Universe, Tom Wolfe called them—flew so far above the laws of the land that they began to imagine themselves exempt from all laws, including economics, physics and averages. This magical thinking came to a head with a wave of death-defying speculation in mortgage-backed securities, and quite suddenly, in 2008, the walls came tumbling down, exposing a phantom economy based on nothing but arrogance and sleight of hand.
Huge banks failed while others begged for taxpayer bailouts, the markets reeled and contracted, unemployment soared, foreign banks and governments began to look askance at America's credit. Instead of a stable economy and an affluent society we confronted a hemorrhaging scandal, a crime accurately portrayed as the looting of America. We woke up from our consumer coma to discover that the bastards had stolen everything. You've seen the numbers: The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, the super-rich targeted by OWS, emerged from this shattered, looted economy with a net worth greater than the "bottom" 90 percent.
In the past 30 years they've nearly tripled their after-tax income—275 percent—while the poorest fifth gained a virtually stagnant 18 percent. Economist Paul Krugman emphasizes that it's the one-tenth of 1 percent, the fabulously rich one-thousandth, who account for a lion's share of the 1 percent's gains. These high lords of lucre have increased their income 400 percent since 1979.
Meanwhile, one in seven Americans lives below the poverty line, and a full one-third,100 million—live in poverty or what The New York Times calls "the fretful zone just above it." One in 15, the largest percentage since the Great Depression, falls 50 percent below the poverty line, with an annual individual income of less than $6,000. In a recent German study that established a "social justice" index (poverty levels, education, health care, income equality) for countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States ranked 27th among 31 nations, outstripping only Greece, Turkey, Chile and Mexico. Meanwhile, also, Wall Street banks on taxpayer life support continued to pay out billions in bonuses, monstrously inflated CEO salaries showed no signs of shrinking and the Republican Party campaigned for more of the bloody same, and a stronger dose of it: no taxes, no regulations, no unions.
This is beyond unacceptable, much closer to unspeakable, like an economic survey comparing the French court at Versailles to the sans-culottes. This is not what the Founders of the Great American Experiment had in mind (they thought slavery might be the fatal worm in our apple, but it turned out to be capitalism). This is what the OWS demonstrators, emerging from our underperforming high schools and colleges, found blocking their way to the future. Critics chide them for failing to establish specific demands, but a slate of demands from Occupy Chicago struck me as savvy and dead-on: repeal tax cuts and close loopholes for the rich, prosecute the Wall Street felons of 2008, separate commercial lending from investment banking, rein in lobbyists, eliminate corporate personhood and overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision of 2010.
This last demand is perhaps the most critical. The decision that defined campaign contributions as free speech, delivered by the court's 5-4 Republican majority, removed the last legal obstacles to a wallet-based political system that leaves the 1, or one-hundredth of 1 percent, in unchallenged control of our fortunes and our public lives. It opened the floodgates for a multibillion-dollar campaign to defeat President Obama, and any candidates who might resist corporate feudalism, in 2012.
In the words of the late Molly Ivins, "We either get the money out of politics or we lose the democracy."
There's a grave possibility that it has already been lost. But those "terrific kids" in the tents, with their black-and-blue ribs and their eyes red from pepper spray, seem to be the only Americans who are dead sure what's at stake. "I want us to be the country's moral touchstone, its unofficial conscience, its model for what is good," said one rebel named Katie, coughing with bronchitis from sleeping outside.
Wear garlic against the pundit or politician who sneers at Katie. She and her friends may be the last, best hope, if hope there is. Join them if you're young and tough enough, send them money if you can still afford it, but for God's sake listen to them. Their voices represent either America waking up at last, or its final, futile protests about to be smothered by dumb money and dumb force. Will you sit on the sidelines and watch?
Shame, indeed. Attempts by the police chief and the mayor to defend this preposterous cinematic overkill only added to the embarrassment. They claim that the assault rifles were not aimed at the protesters, but the photograph is there for everyone to see that they're lying. Police attacked without warning due, they claimed, to "the known risks associated with anarchist groups," as if America has been much plagued by anarchist violence. If some protester had made a nervous grab for his cellphone or his fountain pen, would we have had a bullet-riddled (unarmed) corpse lying on Franklin Street? For that frozen moment caught by the beleaguered reporter's camera, downtown Chapel Hill looked like the streets of Cairo or Damascus.
This is North Carolina, where we like to believe that our law enforcement officers still emulate Sheriff Andy Taylor of the canonical Andy Griffith Show. What would Andy have done in the same situation, instead of recruiting 15 commandos in riot gear to arrest seven unarmed trespassers? He would, of course, have sent over Aunt Bee with a plate of fresh brownies, and then amiably advised the young people that they could have breakfast tomorrow at home, or with him at the jailhouse—their choice. And he would have kept his excitable deputy Barney Fife, with his one bullet, as far from the crime scene as possible.
Real life was never much like Mayberry R.F.D. But Chapel Hill is nothing much like Oakland or Manhattan, where a wild variety of dangerous characters might be camping out with the idealists. I'm sympathetic to the plight of police officers, who are—thanks to America's psychotic gun cult and its captive legislators, next to suicide bombers, the craziest people left on Earth—facing the Streets of Laredo every day on the job.
Last week in Wake County, a deputy answering a domestic disturbance call took a shotgun blast in the chest and was saved only by his bulletproof vest. In the NRA's Second Amendment Nation, any gray-haired lady tending her philodendrons may be packing a Glock. But in a temperate zone like Chapel Hill, someone in authority ought to be experienced and prudent enough to realize that college-town demonstrators are a fairly harmless lot compared to wife beaters, or even Tea Party soldiers whose T-shirts say "God, Guns, Babies."
"Anarchist" is one of those alien-sounding words that make simple people very nervous. Sometimes I wish that protesters would merely state their grievances and leave all those isms, those media-tortured labels, at home. It only takes one nervous rifleman, maybe one who grew up hearing about depraved radicals and atheists on right-wing radio, to panic and trigger Kent State, or Tahrir Square. With the Occupy Wall Street movement now spreading to hundreds of cities and campuses, and mounting pressure on thousands of defensive and unsophisticated police officers, it would be the safe and civilized decision to leave those assault rifles back in their lockers—at least until someone spots a demonstrator carrying one.
The liberators of the derelict auto dealership in Chapel Hill were acting independently of the local "Occupy" encampment, which disavowed their action while acknowledging their affiliation with the movement. But the Occupiers, whose critique of America emphasizes its mindless materialism, are no doubt delighted to point out what a sleepy Southern town full of Ph.D.s will do to protect abandoned property. Never mind the rhetoric. Just look at the picture.
Occupy 6, Chapel Hill 0. No need to kick the extra point. Other critical points for the movement were scored at UC Davis, where passive protesters were callously and viciously pepper-sprayed, and at UC Berkeley, where Robert Hass, a former U.S. poet laureate, described a cordon of Alameda County deputies with billy clubs smashing students and faculty indiscriminately. Hass himself was hit in the ribs and arms, his wife was knocked to the ground, and a Wordsworth scholar was dragged across the grass by her long humanist hair.
Idiot force has been deployed against Occupy at dozens of its tent cities, although assault rifles have yet to appear anywhere other than Chapel Hill. Every image of belligerent overreaction to a nonviolent protest—diligently videotaped, instantly online—is a victory for this promising experiment in civil disobedience, which in the digital age commands an audience inconceivable to Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.
But those great martyrs of nonviolence, who succeeded in spite of the violence they failed to survive, laid down the rules of this game. It's about self-control: You conquer by conquering yourself. Your enemy is exposed, isolated and in the end defeated by his brutality and lack of restraint.
That's all to the good, unless those are your ribs, your hair. The other lesson young rebels learn rapidly is that revolutions, in the words of one of Chapel Hill's declared anarchists, "are not like a dinner party." Civil disobedience is no walk in the park. It involves serious physical risks. There are sometimes martyrs. Pressed sufficiently, even the most benign authority will usually show its fangs. Television deceives. Was there ever a real-life lawman like Sheriff Andy Taylor, who never met a malefactor he didn't like? Or even one like Marshal Matt Dillon, who was always fair and avoided violence if he could? It's not a great secret that most people who seek authority, or defend it, fall toward the controlling side of the psychological spectrum. They tend to prize order and orderly citizens, an equilibrium that civil disobedience so rudely violates. "Disturbing the peace" is a punishable offense with deep historical roots.
Disturb their peace and they will bite you, they will beat you. They might shoot you. Expect no smiles, no brownies. You make a stern, life-altering commitment when you take your grievances to the street. I had to grin at an e-mail an old friend forwarded to me, from his daughter in New York, who joined last week's night march across the Brooklyn Bridge to reclaim Zuccotti Park. "Being a revolutionary is cold work," she reports.
It's cold, dangerous and not always rewarding. Failed movements make cynics of young people who embrace a cause with everything they have and see it come to nothing. My generation, the one that marched against segregation and the war in Vietnam, can point to major achievements and major disappointments. On our worst days we feel that we, as a generation, are a major disappointment. It's a right-wing canard that the tie-dyed Aquarians all ended up in pinstripes—true Jerry Rubins are rare—but how did the egalitarian dreams of the '60s decay into the grim corporate feudalism that Occupy Wall Street so quixotically confronts? At what point, exactly, was it clear that greed had trumped altruism and cash had devoured representative democracy?
If this is a revolution we're watching, perhaps it's not so much class warfare as generational warfare. The most deluded members of my generation join the mock-revolution they call the tea party, funded by fascist billionaires, scripted by the usual talk-radio gargoyles and apparently so stunted by the brain plaque of advancing age that it imagines the government is its archenemy, to the great amusement of the corporate leviathans who operate that government like a hand puppet.
This cruel farce draws most of its recruits from my own demographic group, and I'm ashamed. Who knows why expired testosterone leads to big guns, silly hats and prayer breakfasts? The late George Kennan, a brilliant diplomat and historian but a disturbing elitist, once espoused limiting the vote to white males. In America's best interests, I'd be willing to see that Kennan doctrine reversed: Take the vote away from white men, or at least all white men over 45. See what that would do for the GOP. Naturally, I hope the young people in charge would make exceptions for me and a couple of my friends.
The truth, in spite of all the graybeards who keep running for president, is that our time is over. If I slept out on the ground my arthritis would cripple me. And in all honesty, though I joined a march or two in my time, passive resistance was never one of my strengths. If some storm trooper with a truncheon steamrollered my wife the way Hass' wife was steamrollered, I'd get his badge number and probably burn his house down. It's an ethnic tic. You probably saw Braveheart.
It's up to them now, the green, clean, unexpected revolutionaries one Manhattan office worker called "those terrific kids in the park." It's up to you, whoever you are, and encouraging polls indicate that most Americans don't buy the predictable smears from the right-wing coven, the ones that dismiss you as spoiled children of privilege who would rather demonstrate than work. If our self-esteem is based on the noxiousness of our enemies—I cherish mine—you should all be swollen with pride. You've been called "fascists" by Karl Rove, a criminal thug who belongs on Cellblock B instead of Fox News. Ann Coulter claims that America views you with "hilarity and revulsion," which pretty accurately sums up her own impact and her career. "Go get a bath right after you get a job," snarls Newt Gingrich, an influence-peddler who's had no legitimate job for 15 years and exists only to give the word "hypocrisy" a human face.
My sympathies are obvious. What you in the tents can accomplish remains to be seen. But what I think I see, through the media fog of polarized America, is the return of the full-fledged idealists (as opposed to single-issue idealists) who seemed to go underground around 1980, possibly because the mass media abandoned them during the mudslide of self-celebration that began with Reaganism and culminated in Facebook.
I say God bless them, and God will if he still has any investment in the United States of America. The Goliath they challenge has crushed a thousand Davids. The good news is that "the kids" are right on target. Their diagnosis is bull's-eye correct, and the patient is critical. For this country to survive, it must find saner ways to pursue and multiply wealth, and find them quickly. The cannibal capitalism that produced a Goldman Sachs and a Bernie Madoff is subhuman and obscene. There's no form of government more inherently offensive than plutocracy—only theocracy comes close. When a citizen comes of age in a plutocracy, he has no moral choice but to slay Pluto or die trying.
The history of American plutocracy is shockingly simple. The Industrial Revolution fueled the metamorphosis of capitalism into a ravenous monster that devoured resources, landscapes and human beings on a scale no wars or natural disasters had ever approached. The wealth generated by this devastation created colossal corporations and financial operations far more powerful than elected governments; long ago the individuals who controlled these giants learned that it was cost-effective to buy up the politicians and turn governments into virtual subsidiaries. Along with the unprecedented wealth of the new ruling class came two protective myths, transparently false but widely accepted: one, that the feeble, compliant federal government was somehow the enemy of free enterprise; two, the outrageous trickle-down theory, which urged us to choke the rich with riches in the hope that they would disgorge a few crumbs for the peasants.
Investment banks and hedge funds were designed as perfect engines for multiplying the assets of the affluent. The Wall Street elite of the 20th century—Masters of the Universe, Tom Wolfe called them—flew so far above the laws of the land that they began to imagine themselves exempt from all laws, including economics, physics and averages. This magical thinking came to a head with a wave of death-defying speculation in mortgage-backed securities, and quite suddenly, in 2008, the walls came tumbling down, exposing a phantom economy based on nothing but arrogance and sleight of hand.
Huge banks failed while others begged for taxpayer bailouts, the markets reeled and contracted, unemployment soared, foreign banks and governments began to look askance at America's credit. Instead of a stable economy and an affluent society we confronted a hemorrhaging scandal, a crime accurately portrayed as the looting of America. We woke up from our consumer coma to discover that the bastards had stolen everything. You've seen the numbers: The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, the super-rich targeted by OWS, emerged from this shattered, looted economy with a net worth greater than the "bottom" 90 percent.
In the past 30 years they've nearly tripled their after-tax income—275 percent—while the poorest fifth gained a virtually stagnant 18 percent. Economist Paul Krugman emphasizes that it's the one-tenth of 1 percent, the fabulously rich one-thousandth, who account for a lion's share of the 1 percent's gains. These high lords of lucre have increased their income 400 percent since 1979.
Meanwhile, one in seven Americans lives below the poverty line, and a full one-third,100 million—live in poverty or what The New York Times calls "the fretful zone just above it." One in 15, the largest percentage since the Great Depression, falls 50 percent below the poverty line, with an annual individual income of less than $6,000. In a recent German study that established a "social justice" index (poverty levels, education, health care, income equality) for countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States ranked 27th among 31 nations, outstripping only Greece, Turkey, Chile and Mexico. Meanwhile, also, Wall Street banks on taxpayer life support continued to pay out billions in bonuses, monstrously inflated CEO salaries showed no signs of shrinking and the Republican Party campaigned for more of the bloody same, and a stronger dose of it: no taxes, no regulations, no unions.
This is beyond unacceptable, much closer to unspeakable, like an economic survey comparing the French court at Versailles to the sans-culottes. This is not what the Founders of the Great American Experiment had in mind (they thought slavery might be the fatal worm in our apple, but it turned out to be capitalism). This is what the OWS demonstrators, emerging from our underperforming high schools and colleges, found blocking their way to the future. Critics chide them for failing to establish specific demands, but a slate of demands from Occupy Chicago struck me as savvy and dead-on: repeal tax cuts and close loopholes for the rich, prosecute the Wall Street felons of 2008, separate commercial lending from investment banking, rein in lobbyists, eliminate corporate personhood and overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision of 2010.
This last demand is perhaps the most critical. The decision that defined campaign contributions as free speech, delivered by the court's 5-4 Republican majority, removed the last legal obstacles to a wallet-based political system that leaves the 1, or one-hundredth of 1 percent, in unchallenged control of our fortunes and our public lives. It opened the floodgates for a multibillion-dollar campaign to defeat President Obama, and any candidates who might resist corporate feudalism, in 2012.
In the words of the late Molly Ivins, "We either get the money out of politics or we lose the democracy."
There's a grave possibility that it has already been lost. But those "terrific kids" in the tents, with their black-and-blue ribs and their eyes red from pepper spray, seem to be the only Americans who are dead sure what's at stake. "I want us to be the country's moral touchstone, its unofficial conscience, its model for what is good," said one rebel named Katie, coughing with bronchitis from sleeping outside.
Wear garlic against the pundit or politician who sneers at Katie. She and her friends may be the last, best hope, if hope there is. Join them if you're young and tough enough, send them money if you can still afford it, but for God's sake listen to them. Their voices represent either America waking up at last, or its final, futile protests about to be smothered by dumb money and dumb force. Will you sit on the sidelines and watch?
Chevelle Begins Own "Occupy Movement" With Hats Off to the Bull [Fitted Hat]
Pete Loeffler, lead vocalist and guitarist for Chicago hard-rock trio Chevelle, is wandering through a crowd of protesters gathered as they scrawl various slogans on their signs. The scene is a familiar one in 2011, but it comes with a new soundtrack: Chevelle is in its second day of shooting a video in Los Angeles for new single "Face to the Floor."
Given the current political climate across the country, along with the lyrics to the song railing against greed, it might sound like Chevelle is producing a music-video conceptualization of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Not necessarily, says Sam Loeffler, older brother of Pete and the group's drummer. He views it as more of a "general statement" but acknowledges that the trio has brought the realm of politics into its music — a mixture they've never experimented with in the past. Within a nationwide atmosphere of contempt against the powers that be, this artistic transition was inevitable.
"Now we have to," Loeffler says.
The impending release of Hats Off to the Bull, the band's sixth studio album, signals that change.
Loeffler explains that the band isn't taking sides across the political spectrum per se but that it does favor one side in a battle he characterizes as "America versus our current government" — they're pulling for the underdog.
"Right now, I think that people in America are the underdog — it's brutal," Loeffler says.
In fact, the group decided the album's title would be Hats Off to the Bull since it most represented standing with the underdog, Loeffler explains. Never Bet the Devil Your Head was also up for consideration for the album's title — the same title as a short story penned by Edgar Allen Poe — as was the name Envy. Hats Off to the Bull, however, fits the bill.
Chevelle's staunch opposition to greed is highlighted in the album's aforementioned single, "Face to the Floor," even including a specific stab at Ponzi-schemer Bernie Madoff. Pete Loeffler has previously explained his not-so-favorable opinion on Madoff, saying, "He raked people over the coals, stole, and is a terrible person."
Despite this new exercise in politics and standing with the disadvantaged, don't be too quick to toss the polarizing "Occupy" title at the group, as Loeffler distanced himself, and the music, from the label. "I think there's a lot of people who I agree with that are doing the Occupy thing, and there are a lot of people who are doing it that I don't agree with," he says.
Still, the group has flirted with the "Occupy" label and recently billed performances in Chicago and Washington, D.C., as "Occupy Chevelle." The occupation spreads to the Southeast on the band's current U.S. tour, which stops in West Palm Beach for the 16th running of the Buzz Bake Sale on Saturday and concludes December 16 in Biloxi, Mississippi.
The political clout of Hats Off to the Bull comes a decade after the band's initial rise, with 2002 breakout record Wonder What's Next. It yielded a trio of hit singles in "The Red," "Send the Pain Below," and "Closure" that remain among the band's most cherished. By the following summer, they were sharing the main stage at Ozzfest alongside Ozzy Osbourne, Korn, Marilyn Manson, and Disturbed.
After three more studio albums and countless tours, Hats Off to the Bull — slated for release on December 8 — is getting its fair share of hype. Aside from high rankings among the various radio charts for "Face to the Floor," Chevelle is scheduled for a release-day appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Five studio albums in, Loeffler admits it becomes more of a challenge to create tracks that embody the distinctive songwriting and melodic hard-rock sound that brands Chevelle but explains that the process forces them to progress musically.
"As a musician, as a band, your writing is always developing," he says. "Our writing has certainly developed — you learn how to not only say things lyrically. We've published more than 70 songs, and they're all different — we certainly hope they are — but you have to make something different, something you love, and it gets difficult."
Loeffler says the band searched for new tones to experiment with, aided by producer Joe Barresi, including digging into stockpiles of records released as much as five decades ago. Smaller changes — expect a talk box and an organ to make appearances — advance the range of sounds Chevelle adds to its catalog without abandoning its signature style.
Parsing out his younger brother's writing ability isn't an easy task. "We don't like things to be on the surface very much," he acknowledges. The subject matter of Chevelle's lyrics has historically been inspired by things experienced by the band, like "Vitamin R (Leading Us Along)," from their third album, inspired by a friend of the brothers who developed an addiction to Ritalin. The same inspiration of maintaining the "deep" aspect of the lyrics still applies.
"Pete really likes to write about things that are going on around him," Sam Loeffler says. "He doesn't really like to write about 'he did this,' 'she did this,' 'I love her' — things like that."
Given the current political climate across the country, along with the lyrics to the song railing against greed, it might sound like Chevelle is producing a music-video conceptualization of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Not necessarily, says Sam Loeffler, older brother of Pete and the group's drummer. He views it as more of a "general statement" but acknowledges that the trio has brought the realm of politics into its music — a mixture they've never experimented with in the past. Within a nationwide atmosphere of contempt against the powers that be, this artistic transition was inevitable.
"Now we have to," Loeffler says.
The impending release of Hats Off to the Bull, the band's sixth studio album, signals that change.
Loeffler explains that the band isn't taking sides across the political spectrum per se but that it does favor one side in a battle he characterizes as "America versus our current government" — they're pulling for the underdog.
"Right now, I think that people in America are the underdog — it's brutal," Loeffler says.
In fact, the group decided the album's title would be Hats Off to the Bull since it most represented standing with the underdog, Loeffler explains. Never Bet the Devil Your Head was also up for consideration for the album's title — the same title as a short story penned by Edgar Allen Poe — as was the name Envy. Hats Off to the Bull, however, fits the bill.
Chevelle's staunch opposition to greed is highlighted in the album's aforementioned single, "Face to the Floor," even including a specific stab at Ponzi-schemer Bernie Madoff. Pete Loeffler has previously explained his not-so-favorable opinion on Madoff, saying, "He raked people over the coals, stole, and is a terrible person."
Despite this new exercise in politics and standing with the disadvantaged, don't be too quick to toss the polarizing "Occupy" title at the group, as Loeffler distanced himself, and the music, from the label. "I think there's a lot of people who I agree with that are doing the Occupy thing, and there are a lot of people who are doing it that I don't agree with," he says.
Still, the group has flirted with the "Occupy" label and recently billed performances in Chicago and Washington, D.C., as "Occupy Chevelle." The occupation spreads to the Southeast on the band's current U.S. tour, which stops in West Palm Beach for the 16th running of the Buzz Bake Sale on Saturday and concludes December 16 in Biloxi, Mississippi.
The political clout of Hats Off to the Bull comes a decade after the band's initial rise, with 2002 breakout record Wonder What's Next. It yielded a trio of hit singles in "The Red," "Send the Pain Below," and "Closure" that remain among the band's most cherished. By the following summer, they were sharing the main stage at Ozzfest alongside Ozzy Osbourne, Korn, Marilyn Manson, and Disturbed.
After three more studio albums and countless tours, Hats Off to the Bull — slated for release on December 8 — is getting its fair share of hype. Aside from high rankings among the various radio charts for "Face to the Floor," Chevelle is scheduled for a release-day appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Five studio albums in, Loeffler admits it becomes more of a challenge to create tracks that embody the distinctive songwriting and melodic hard-rock sound that brands Chevelle but explains that the process forces them to progress musically.
"As a musician, as a band, your writing is always developing," he says. "Our writing has certainly developed — you learn how to not only say things lyrically. We've published more than 70 songs, and they're all different — we certainly hope they are — but you have to make something different, something you love, and it gets difficult."
Loeffler says the band searched for new tones to experiment with, aided by producer Joe Barresi, including digging into stockpiles of records released as much as five decades ago. Smaller changes — expect a talk box and an organ to make appearances — advance the range of sounds Chevelle adds to its catalog without abandoning its signature style.
Parsing out his younger brother's writing ability isn't an easy task. "We don't like things to be on the surface very much," he acknowledges. The subject matter of Chevelle's lyrics has historically been inspired by things experienced by the band, like "Vitamin R (Leading Us Along)," from their third album, inspired by a friend of the brothers who developed an addiction to Ritalin. The same inspiration of maintaining the "deep" aspect of the lyrics still applies.
"Pete really likes to write about things that are going on around him," Sam Loeffler says. "He doesn't really like to write about 'he did this,' 'she did this,' 'I love her' — things like that."
Flesher family will flip switch on Christmas light display Friday [hat]
With a circuit that now includes five electrical meters, 7,000 feet of electrical wiring, hundreds of extension cords and more than 2 million lights, Flesher family members will jump-start Christmas season when they open their annual light display to the public this week.
The Fleshers have created the lavish display at their eastern Bonita Springs farm for most of the past 25 years.
It is a family labor of love that this year started with infrastructure work in September and will culminate when the lights go on and the first visitor arrives Friday evening.
"If we get the word out, I'm hoping for 75,000 to 100,000 visitors," said Chuck Flesher, who was finishing off the display Monday with his mother Margaret, his daughter Roxanne, and his teenage grandsons Mark and Steven.
The Fleshers have placed hundreds of inflatable Christmas figures, lighted deer, a Christmas train, a moving doll carousel, a Nativity scene and countless lights across two acres of the farm, which sits on Bonita Grande Drive just north of Bonita Beach Road.
The farm's garage and outbuildings are replete with electric trains, Christmas trees, shiny ornaments, vintage moving toys and Christmas dolls.
The family's horses will be decked in Santa hats, and each will have a stall adorned with a Christmas stocking.
A dozen volunteers will direct visitors who park in an improvised lot that can hold 500 cars, Flesher said.
"It does get a little bigger each year," he said. "I think we're one of the biggest displays in Southwest Florida that hasn't gone commercial. We don't want to do that, we want to keep it fun."
Chuck Flesher took over the project after the death of his father, Charlie, in 1999, and illness of older brother, Bud, who now lives in Georgia.
Charlie and Bud Flesher created the first display in 1986.
Chuck Flesher said he started mostly from scratch after a three-year hiatus ended in 2009, which has allowed him to count the lights as he buys more strings each year.
Flesher places most of the electrical lines and lights but lets daughter Roxanne check and replace the bulbs.
"I don't mind the work, but I don't have the patience to check the lights," he said. "When they all come on and they all stay on, I'm happy as a peacock."Margaret Flesher said that despite initial reluctance, reinstituting the yearly display has been a blessing for her.
"My favorite part is standing in front of the garage, greeting the people who come," she said. "I get lots and lots of hugs."
A decorated table with spiral notebooks that serve as guest books also greets visitors. Slots in the table allow the guests to donate to local charitable causes.
"Some people sign in and give money, some don't want to do either," said Chuck Flesher. "It's OK either way, we just want them to come."
This year, proceeds will benefit an Optimist Club scholarship program and a Lehigh Acres teen.
Notebooks from years past list guests from as far away as Germany and Italy. Guests also write short comments on the display.
Although the Fleshers haven't counted all the names in their guest books, they enjoy reading the comments.
"Some of the visitors have been here as kids and have then brought their kids and on down the line," said Margaret Flesher. "It's become a real tradition."
The Fleshers have created the lavish display at their eastern Bonita Springs farm for most of the past 25 years.
It is a family labor of love that this year started with infrastructure work in September and will culminate when the lights go on and the first visitor arrives Friday evening.
"If we get the word out, I'm hoping for 75,000 to 100,000 visitors," said Chuck Flesher, who was finishing off the display Monday with his mother Margaret, his daughter Roxanne, and his teenage grandsons Mark and Steven.
The Fleshers have placed hundreds of inflatable Christmas figures, lighted deer, a Christmas train, a moving doll carousel, a Nativity scene and countless lights across two acres of the farm, which sits on Bonita Grande Drive just north of Bonita Beach Road.
The farm's garage and outbuildings are replete with electric trains, Christmas trees, shiny ornaments, vintage moving toys and Christmas dolls.
The family's horses will be decked in Santa hats, and each will have a stall adorned with a Christmas stocking.
A dozen volunteers will direct visitors who park in an improvised lot that can hold 500 cars, Flesher said.
"It does get a little bigger each year," he said. "I think we're one of the biggest displays in Southwest Florida that hasn't gone commercial. We don't want to do that, we want to keep it fun."
Chuck Flesher took over the project after the death of his father, Charlie, in 1999, and illness of older brother, Bud, who now lives in Georgia.
Charlie and Bud Flesher created the first display in 1986.
Chuck Flesher said he started mostly from scratch after a three-year hiatus ended in 2009, which has allowed him to count the lights as he buys more strings each year.
Flesher places most of the electrical lines and lights but lets daughter Roxanne check and replace the bulbs.
"I don't mind the work, but I don't have the patience to check the lights," he said. "When they all come on and they all stay on, I'm happy as a peacock."Margaret Flesher said that despite initial reluctance, reinstituting the yearly display has been a blessing for her.
"My favorite part is standing in front of the garage, greeting the people who come," she said. "I get lots and lots of hugs."
A decorated table with spiral notebooks that serve as guest books also greets visitors. Slots in the table allow the guests to donate to local charitable causes.
"Some people sign in and give money, some don't want to do either," said Chuck Flesher. "It's OK either way, we just want them to come."
This year, proceeds will benefit an Optimist Club scholarship program and a Lehigh Acres teen.
Notebooks from years past list guests from as far away as Germany and Italy. Guests also write short comments on the display.
Although the Fleshers haven't counted all the names in their guest books, they enjoy reading the comments.
"Some of the visitors have been here as kids and have then brought their kids and on down the line," said Margaret Flesher. "It's become a real tradition."
The Closet Thinker: keep on dancing [replica watches]
Recently, when glued to the gruesome news, I have veered between terrible anxiety that we are all tipping into a financial abyss and the hope that everything will turn out to be fine; or rather, that we have survived similarly uncertain times before, dancing on the edge of a precipice.
As for the reported expansion of the European Financial Stability Facility bailout fund, I confess I tend to forget the acronym, but not the numbers: one trillion euros. I cannot conceive of what this figure means, but instead find myself thinking of a snapshot from December 1926, of two young flappers demonstrating the charleston on a Chicago rooftop, teetering above a great drop. They were dancing three years before the Wall Street Crash, when bankrupts jumped off parapets, but just a month after American Vogue had hailed Chanel's little black dress as the future: knee length, sleek, and modern as the new automobiles ('Here is a Ford signed Chanel').
Gucci meets The Great Gatsby
Nine decades after 'flapper' entered the English language - to denote a girl 'somewhat daring in conduct, speech, and dress', according to an early dictionary reference - it is difficult to understand the consternation caused by their appearance. In 1922 the US Secretary of Labour denounced the 'flippancy of the cigarette-smoking, cocktail-drinking flapper'; this season, the term has had some currency again, but only in relation to the resurgence of 1920s-inspired beaded party frocks. Gucci's black and gold jazz-age dresses, central to the brand's spring/summer 2012 catwalk collection, are already in evidence in Hollywood (Evan Rachel Wood channelling Clara Bow - the original it-girl - with cropped hair and crimson lipstick on the red carpet this month). The high street has also paid homage to The Great Gatsby , most notably with Wallis's 1923 collection, based on designs from the label's pattern archives; clever Wallis, with prices under 100, yet gleaming with the subtle patina of sartorial history.
Most authentic of all, however, is the forthcoming Kerry Taylor auction, which will take place on Tuesday (the viewing starts tomorrow at the Royal Opera Arcade in Pall Mall). The items on sale include Elizabeth Taylor's gold couture pieces, Audrey Hepburn's ivory lace gown, the Duchess of Windsor's patent-leather handbag, and an early Gabrielle Chanel flapper dress, in beige crêpe-de-chine, dating from 1920. The estimate for the latter is upwards of 6,000 pounds, giving weight to the overused phrase 'investment dressinge_SSRq, not that the lucky buyer is likely to wear such a valuable museum piece. Eurobonds or couture originals? If I had any money to invest, I know which I'd prefer.
As for the reported expansion of the European Financial Stability Facility bailout fund, I confess I tend to forget the acronym, but not the numbers: one trillion euros. I cannot conceive of what this figure means, but instead find myself thinking of a snapshot from December 1926, of two young flappers demonstrating the charleston on a Chicago rooftop, teetering above a great drop. They were dancing three years before the Wall Street Crash, when bankrupts jumped off parapets, but just a month after American Vogue had hailed Chanel's little black dress as the future: knee length, sleek, and modern as the new automobiles ('Here is a Ford signed Chanel').
Gucci meets The Great Gatsby
Nine decades after 'flapper' entered the English language - to denote a girl 'somewhat daring in conduct, speech, and dress', according to an early dictionary reference - it is difficult to understand the consternation caused by their appearance. In 1922 the US Secretary of Labour denounced the 'flippancy of the cigarette-smoking, cocktail-drinking flapper'; this season, the term has had some currency again, but only in relation to the resurgence of 1920s-inspired beaded party frocks. Gucci's black and gold jazz-age dresses, central to the brand's spring/summer 2012 catwalk collection, are already in evidence in Hollywood (Evan Rachel Wood channelling Clara Bow - the original it-girl - with cropped hair and crimson lipstick on the red carpet this month). The high street has also paid homage to The Great Gatsby , most notably with Wallis's 1923 collection, based on designs from the label's pattern archives; clever Wallis, with prices under 100, yet gleaming with the subtle patina of sartorial history.
Most authentic of all, however, is the forthcoming Kerry Taylor auction, which will take place on Tuesday (the viewing starts tomorrow at the Royal Opera Arcade in Pall Mall). The items on sale include Elizabeth Taylor's gold couture pieces, Audrey Hepburn's ivory lace gown, the Duchess of Windsor's patent-leather handbag, and an early Gabrielle Chanel flapper dress, in beige crêpe-de-chine, dating from 1920. The estimate for the latter is upwards of 6,000 pounds, giving weight to the overused phrase 'investment dressinge_SSRq, not that the lucky buyer is likely to wear such a valuable museum piece. Eurobonds or couture originals? If I had any money to invest, I know which I'd prefer.
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