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Help handling back-to-school organizational needs
Found: 5 Days 16 Hours 40 Minutes ago
The Hour - BY MEGAN SEXTON
McClatchy Newspapers
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- It won't be long before the kids are dumping their backpacks on the kitchen floor and complaining about homework.
Is your household ready?
There are all sorts of products on the market to help you get a handle on back-to-school organizational needs.
Here's a look at a few.
Charging station. Are chargers for cell phones, MP3 players and game systems taking over outlets around your house? Can you never find the charger that fits YOUR cell phone? Check out this two-level charging station from Bed Bath and Beyond. It can store up to four devices for charging and features a pull-out accessory drawer and side pocket for storing wires. $14.99
Light and storage. This desk lamp organizer offers light to study and a place to hold your pens, paper clips and other goodies. It has a bendable gooseneck and accommodates a 40-watt bulb. $14.99 at Target.
Crates everywhere. Everybody needs a couple of plastic crates. They are great for holding soccer cleats and shin guards in the garage or filing notes for term papers. These stacking plastic crates hold letter or legal hanging files and they lock together to stack or make cubes. They also can be used with casters to move around your room. Staples, $7.29 each.
Everything in its place. Back to school means lots of slips of paper. Keep them organized in the 19-pocket mini case file. The accordion-style file case comes with a handle on top so you can take it with you to sort coupons or receipts while you're waiting in the carpool line. $10.99 at Staples.
Style and storage. This storage ottoman is covered in micro-suede and available in several colors -- from black and gray to pink and green. It's a 15-inch cube, and the top pops off to stow away books or anything else. $19.99 at Target.
Keeping track. Back to school means back to schedules. There are all sorts of options available for keeping you on task. Dry-erase boards are available in plenty of shapes and sizes. This 11-by-14 inch magnetic-dry erase board is outlined as a monthly calendar. Just fill in your appointments, soccer games and test dates. Then wipe them clean. $5.99 at Target.
Too many wires. Do those wires seem to be multiplying under your computer desk or entertainment system? And how do they get so tangled? Try the wire organizer grommet, which hides tangled wires and cables with three adjustable openings. $4.99 at Staples.
Too many plugs. Check out the PowerSquid by Philips, which converts one grounded outlet into five flexible adapter-ready outlets. It also has a master power switch. $15.79 at Staples.
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Efforts Increase To Preserve 'Family Forests'
Found: 6 Days 13 Hours 25 Minutes ago
Hartford Courant - Assessment, Remediation OfferedDan Donahue likes to say that forestry isn't rocket science....
Hartford Council Members Call For Meeting On Library Funding
Found: 6 Days 17 Hours 49 Minutes ago
Hartford Courant - Three members of the Hartford city council minority have called for a special meeting next Thursday to consider reopening two closed branch libraries....
Scientists: N.Y. not safe from major quake
Found: Minutes ago
The Hour - Associated Press
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- An analysis of recent earthquake activity around New York City has found that many small faults that were believed to be inactive could contribute to a major, disastrous earthquake.
The study also finds that a line of seismic activity stretching from Stamford, Conn., to Peekskill comes within two miles of the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan.
Another fault line near the plant was already known, so the findings suggest Indian Point is at an intersection of faults.
The study's authors, who work at Columbia Univer-sity's Lamont-Doherty Obser-vatory in Palisades, ac-knowledge that the biggest earthquakes -- in the 6 or 7 magnitude range -- are rare in the New York City region. They say a quake of magnitude 7 probably comes about every 3,400 years.
But they note that no one knows when the last one hit, and because of the population density and the concentration of buildings and financial assets, many lives and hundreds of billions of dollars are at risk.
Co-author Leonardo Seeber said in an interview that although the metropolitan area does not have a single great fault like the San Andreas fault in California, "Not having a major fault is not a reason not to worry about earthquakes."
"Instead of having a single major fault or a few major faults, we tend to have a lot of very minor and sort of subtle faults," he said. "It's a family of faults, and that can contribute to the severity of an earthquake."
John Ebel, director of seismology at Boston College's Weston Observatory, said he agreed with the study's finding that small faults can contribute to large earthquakes. "A quake can jump from one fault to another," he said.
The study, published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, analyzed 383 known earthquakes over the past 330 years in or near New York City. The biggest were three that reached magnitude 5 in 1737, 1783 and 1884.
Data on earthquakes since the early 1970s, when Lamont deployed dozens of new detectors, enabled the authors to see patterns from smaller quakes, including the magnitude 4.1 quake that was centered on Ardsley, in Westchester County, in 1985.
The report inferred from the data that there is a seismic zone, previously undetected, running from Stamford to Peekskill and intersecting with the large, well-known Ramapo fault near Indian Point.
Lynn Sykes, the lead author, said the finding means the danger of a big quake near the nuclear plants is greater that had been thought.
Sykes acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press that he is opposed to an application from Entergy Nuclear, which owns the nuclear plant, to extend the licenses of the two reactors, but he said, "I try to keep that as independent from my work as possible."
Columbia spokesman Kevin Krajick said the study had been provided to state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who argued unsuccessfully earlier this year that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should consider the new earthquake data as it decides whether to extend the licenses.
Ebel said the report's suggestion of a fault line was "a purely circumstantial, speculative argument, but while it's speculative it's within the scientific bounds of reason." He praised the study and urged other scientists to build on it.
Jim Steets, a spokesman for Entergy, said the plant was designed to withstand a seismic event. He said that even if the frequency and intensity of earthquakes is greater than was believed when the plant was built, it wouldn't drastically change the outlook for plant safety.
He said the plant "may very well be among the safest places to go during a seismic event."
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Study: Fault Lines Beneath NYC Could Be Active
Found: 1 Week 5 Hours 37 Minutes ago
Eyewitness News - A study of recent earthquake activity around New York City states that many small faults that were believed to be inactive could contribute to a major, disastrous earthquake....
Lehane, a favorite with filmmakers, expands his literary horizon
Found: 1 Week 3 Days 21 Hours 30 Minutes ago
The Hour - BY CHRIS VOGNAR
The Dallas Morning News
LOS ANGELES -- Until now you've been able to find Dennis Lehane's work in two places: the mystery paperback shelves, where his superbly crafted novels have been confined to a sort of genre fiction ghetto, and the multiplex, where filmmakers have converted his cinematic prose into movies such as "Mystic River" and "Gone Baby Gone."
The film streak won't stop with "The Given Day," Lehane's epic historical novel built around the 1919 Boston police strike. Columbia Pictures has already snapped up the rights, and Sam Raimi is expected to direct. But when the book hits stores in September, you can expect to find it in the literature section -- where, some might argue, Lehane's work has belonged all along.
"He's always been a literary writer, but 'The Given Day' is much more ambitious," says Claire Watchell, Lehane's longtime editor at HarperCollins. "It deals with bigger issues and much broader themes. I've known him since his very first book, and there's been such a huge quantum leap. Not just in terms of writing; he's always been a good writer, but in the depth of his characters. He really goes down to the core."
Lehane, interviewed at Book Expo America in Los Angeles last month, has a simpler explanation.
"If you don't challenge yourself every time out, I don't see why you do it," he says.
Flawed detectives, missing children, hearts of darkness: These have been Lehane's stock in trade, propelled by page-turning plots and thorny moral quandaries set mostly on the streets of the working-class Boston area where the author grew up.
All of these ingredients can be found in "The Given Day," but the stakes are higher, the intent more serious, the results richer. At 700 pages, the novel took Lehane four years to write; by contrast, "Mystic River" took two. It mixes characters real (including Babe Ruth, J. Edgar Hoover and Calvin Coolidge) and imagined (a conflicted law enforcement family, a black man on the lam from gangsters and a crooked cop). It tells a timely story about the balance between security and civil liberties.
It sets up shop at the corner of art and escapism. Look for business to be booming.
Sitting at a HarperCollins table at Book Expo, where "The Given Day" was among the most talked-about titles, Lehane greeted interview-interrupting well-wishers ranging from the famous (Ted Turner, with whom he appeared on a breakfast panel that morning) to the anonymous (a Barnes & Noble employee who wanted an autograph). He has the same no-nonsense demeanor as many of his characters, but he's a lot gentler -- which is good, since a knife fight on the Book Expo floor might be awkward.
He agrees that "The Given Day" represents a leap forward for him. But he sees that leap as just another part of a natural progression.
"The challenge after 'Mystic River' was to not get caught in a cycle of Mystic Rivers," he says. "So I wrote 'Shutter Island' (the story of a woman who escapes from a hospital for the criminally insane, currently being filmed by Martin Scorsese). The challenge after 'Shutter Island' was to do a book about the Boston police strike, and then I very quickly realized I was dealing with a historical epic. Every time out I have to go some place artistically different for myself. That's just for me. I can't speak for everyone, but ultimately I can't get inspired unless I'm testing myself."
There are times in "The Given Day" when you can still hear the gears shifting, and when coincidence plays too big a part in moving the plot forward. This is the crank-it-out genre side of Lehane, the writer who in the past has needed the framework of a crime to be solved, frequently by the detective team of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro (the main characters of "Gone Baby Gone").
"Mystery and the detectives were always the metaphors," says Watchell. "But he's now gone beyond that."
"The Given Day" also has a healthy dose of what Lehane calls his "class rage issues," manifested here through a young police lieutenant who grows so sick of conditions in the department that he defies his family by becoming a union organizer. Class themes run throughout Lehane's work; as strong as Clint Eastwood's film adaptation of "Mystic River" was, it ended up glossing over many of the novel's socioeconomic underpinnings. (Ben Affleck's "Gone Baby Gone" fared much better in this regard.)
Lehane's books dramatize a palpable disgust with the arrogance and entitlement wielded by the haves over the have-nots. His father, a former foreman for Sears, Roebuck and Co., was a staunch union man, and Lehane inherited his fire.
"Taking the Lord's name in vain was one cardinal sin in my family," says Lehane, 42. "Crossing a picket line would be No. 2. Those were things my father felt like he could shoot you in the head for. Kill you on the spot. So I grew up with that very strong sensibility."
But little is cut-and-dried in Lehane's moral universe, especially when he writes about issues that speak to the here and now. "The Given Day" unfolds before a backdrop of urban terrorism, orchestrated largely by the real-life Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani (described by Lehane as "the Osama bin Laden of his time"). In the novel, officials use the very real terrorist threat as an opportunity to clamp down on unions and any other potentially subversive activity. Civil liberties take a beating.
Sound familiar?
"What comes across in the book is that I'm not sitting there saying, 'Gee, we shouldn't be afraid of terrorists,"' he explains. "You damn well should. But do you let the fear create your government? Do you let the fear throw out civil rights? If we go that way, then what are we protecting in the end? If you give away one more civil right, if you allow one more torture, you've given away the store. That certainly was the same thing they were facing back in 1918 and 1919."
Meanwhile Lehane faces yet another novel-to-film proposition, a process that should feel more than familiar to him by now.
He says he never planned to become what New York magazine's Vulture blog recently dubbed "crack for directors." He just tries to write good stories. And if they become film, or literature, along the way, then so be it.
"Anybody who writes a book with a movie in mind, why not just skip the process and write a screenplay?" he says. "Books are hard, man. Write the screenplay and save yourself the trouble.
"I write my books to be read."
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$4-A-Gallon Gas Is Teaching America To Retool Economy
Found: 1 Week 5 Days 13 Hours 48 Minutes ago
The Day - The U.S. economy is starting to figure out how to curb its legendary appetite for energy.Consumers are buying fewer sport-utility vehicles and more energy-saving washing ...
Lousy economy threatens states' sales tax holidays
Found: 1 Week 5 Days 22 Hours 6 Minutes ago
The Hour - ATLANTA
By JUANITA COUSINS
Associated Press
Thousands of shoppers have been flocking to malls in more than a dozen states for back-to-school sales tax holidays, buying millions of dollars worth of clothes and school supplies -- and depriving states of much-needed revenue.
The tax holidays offer a financial relief valve to families grappling with high gas and food prices, and are a welcome tradition among retailers. But some lawmakers, economists -- and even some shoppers -- are questioning why states are suspending sales taxes amid a slumping economy. Several states have called off the event entirely.
Vanessa Lee of Atlanta snagged six pairs of sneakers and a few dresses for $115 during Georgia's tax holiday at the start of this month. But the 42-year-old mother of three daughters in elementary school said she would rather have paid the taxes and seen the money go toward education.
"We could do away with the holiday," Lee said. "I would hate to see our teachers and classrooms lose out on money because the state doesn't have enough revenue."
Sixteen states and the District of Columbia hold tax holidays, usually one weekend a year in which clothing, classroom supplies and energy-efficient appliances are exempt from sales tax.
"I understand why legislators want to give people a break -- because the economy is down and people are hurting and can't afford the things they want to buy," said Kim Rueben, public finance economist for the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. "But they aren't taking into account what that revenue could later buy for the states."
Legislators in some states are heeding such advice and may do away with the holidays amid increasing pressure to spend state dollars on bolstering infrastructure or improving schools.
Maryland lawmakers last year put the state's tax holiday on hold until at least 2010, which could drive the state's shoppers to Washington and Virginia for tax holidays. And Florida quashed its two tax holidays for hurricane and back-to-school supplies this year.
Politicians in Maryland blamed a mounting deficit that now tops $1.7 billion for suspending the holiday, which cost the state an estimated $5 million in 2006. Even so, legislators seem reluctant to criticize a popular program.
Maryland Del. Charles Barkley, a Democrat, said he supported the holiday because it "gets people out and spending money."
Florida leaders offered a different reasoning for calling off the holiday, which cost the state an estimated $12 million. State Senate President Ken Pruitt said economists scored it as a loss to the state, and said the National Retail Federation failed to prove that consumers would ultimately save money at the register.
"We've given them the benefit of the doubt for a long time," Pruitt said. "They couldn't show there would be savings for Floridians."
For advocates, the flagging economy makes the tax holidays more crucial than ever.
Lawmakers in Massachusetts, which offers perhaps the nation's broadest sales tax holiday -- all retail items up to $2,500 are exempt from tax -- renewed the two-day event this year despite the tough economy.
"A sales-tax-free weekend will be welcomed more than ever in this tough economy, especially with the high prices of food and fuel," Senate President Therese Murray said. "It is certainly worth it when you consider the positive impact on retail sales and consumer confidence."
States started adopting the sales tax holidays in the late 1990s, and by 2001 a dozen states held them. The list shrank to eight the next year as states grappled with an economic downturn after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Washington-based National Retail Federation, one of the staunchest supporters of the holidays, said they spur a 10 percent bump in sales, but it has no data to back it up.
"There's just something about a sales tax holiday that's different from a regular sale," said J. Craig Shearman, a vice president for the federation, noting the event's "psychological appeal."
"There are a lot of families out there struggling to make ends meet, and they're having to stretch their dollars," he said. "While the 5 percent or so savings doesn't sound like a lot, that could be a make-or-break."
Economists say the holiday tends to lure families already prepared to make a key purchase.
"It's the same sort of family that collects coupons for the grocery store that waits for tax holidays to shop," said Chris Edwards, the director of tax policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. "Consumers time their purchases to coincide with the holiday."
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State's Tax Holiday On Clothes, Shoes Begins Sunday
Found: 1 Week 6 Days 14 Hours 9 Minutes ago
Hartford Courant - Been wavering between that $120 leather jacket at the mall and saving for this winter's heating oil? Consider this: Starting Sunday for a week, you won't have to pay the 6 percent sales tax on the jacket. That means $7.20 off the final price....
Fairfield-SHU dates set for basketball
Found: 2 Weeks 2 Days 3 Hours 58 Minutes ago
Connecticut Post - FAIRFIELD — Fairfield University and Sacred Heart University will renew their basketball rivalry on Tuesday, Nov. 18, at the Arena at Harbor Yard, a day before the Stags leave for the...
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