Baseball Integration Before Jackie Robinson In North Dakota

  Things don't happen in a vacuum - something happened before........

‘Color Blind: The Forgotten Team That Broke Baseball’s Color Line ’ by Tom Dunkel

By Steven V. Roberts, Published: April 7

The cover photo for “Color Blind” shows an integrated baseball team, five white players and six African Americans. One of the whites casually rests his hand on the shoulder of a black teammate. But the “B” on their caps does not stand for Boston or even Brooklyn. They played in Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota, and the photo dates to 1935, 12 years before Jackie Robinson started dismantling baseball’s racial barriers.
As told by Tom Dunkel, the story of how this team came to be — and won the national semipro championship — is a delightful read. Baseball has deep roots in the dusty plains of the Dakotas. Gen. George Custer was based at Fort Lincoln, just outside Bismarck, before losing a decisive road game to Sitting Bull and his Sioux All-Stars at the Little Big Horn in 1876. One of the 268 soldiers to die that day was Pvt. William Davis, third baseman for the post baseball team.
The major leagues assumed their current form in 1901, but in the decades that followed “the House of Baseball” (in historian Harold Seymour’s phrase) had many mansions. With no multiplexes or Netflixes to fill up leisure time, “industrial and recreational leagues flourished,” writes Dunkel, a freelance writer who lives in Washington. “Indian reservations had baseball teams. Employees of coal companies, trolley car manufacturers, police departments, funeral homes, and local Communist parties took to the field together in off-hours.” Baseball became the “weapon of choice for grudge matches between rival towns,” and Bismarck’s fiercest foe was Jamestown, 100 miles to the east.
After Jamestown started signing players from the Negro Leagues in 1932, Bismarck’s manager, an auto dealer and audacious gambler named Neil Churchill, wanted his own gang of “mercenaries.” He asked Abe Saperstein, a Chicago sports promoter best known for creating the Harlem Globetrotters, to recommend the “the greatest colored pitcher in baseball today.” That’s easy, came the reply: Leroy “Satchel” Paige. In fact he’s probably “the best pitcher, period.” But you can’t get him, Saperstein insisted — he has a contract with the Pittsburgh Crawfords. I’ll try anyway, replied Churchill, give me a contact number. Paige, it so happens, resented the owner of the Crawfords and “wanted out of Pittsburgh, the sooner the better.” For $300 or $400 a month plus a used Chrysler, Churchill “convinced baseball’s fastest gun to head west.”
It’s fair to say that Paige and his black teammates stood out in Bismarck. According to the 1930 census, there were exactly 377 “Negroes” in the entire state, and only 46 lived in the capital. The black players were barred from the city’s best hotels, and Churchill had to warn Paige not to be seen “riding white girls around in broad daylight.” But pitching is different from sleeping or dating. On Labor Day of 1933, almost 4,000 fans showed up to watch Satch strike out 15 Jamestown batters and drive in all three runs as Bismarck won 3 to 2. Vengeance was theirs.
Paige had an arm of high-tensile steel but “the heart of a wild stallion” and never stayed put for long. He skipped the 1934 season in Bismarck but returned the next year, perhaps because of Dorothy Running-Deer, whose father raised rattlesnakes and brewed a powerful anti-venom remedy based on a “secret Sioux recipe.” Satch “rubbed a few drops into his right biceps [and] nerve endings that he didn’t know he had screamed for relief.” But he became devoted to the stuff, kneading it into his muscles after every game and never suffering a sore arm. Good thing. When Bismarck swept to the semipro championship in Wichita that summer, Paige won four games, striking out 66 batters in 39 innings.
A triumph, yes, but with a bitter aftertaste. Even though Paige made the majors in 1948, he was already in his 40s. During his best years, his brilliant talent was shadowed and suffocated by racism, and his black teammates played their whole careers in poorly paid obscurity. A major league scout who watched the games in Wichita lamented, “We wish we could find a chemical to bleach some of those colored boys. We could take some of those players up to the majors and win a pennant with ’em.” Paige said of the Bismarck squad: “That was the best team I ever saw. The best players I ever played with. But who ever heard of them?”
At times Dunkel tries too hard to be cute and comes off as annoying. “There is no big bang theory of baseball,” he writes, “It evolved like the blues and the miniskirt.” Really? Baseball is like a miniskirt? And calling Paige “the prize inside the Cracker Jack box of baseball” sounds more like a foul tip than a double off the wall.
Still, this is a tale worth telling. As Satch said, no one has ever heard of that summer in Bismarck, when blacks and whites played and won together. Now they have.

Steven V. Roberts , who teaches journalism and politics at George Washington University, is writing a new book about immigrant athletes.
COLOR BLIND The Forgotten Team That Broke Baseball’s Color Line By Tom Dunkel Atlantic Monthly. 345 pp. $25

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/color-blind-the-forgotten-team-that-broke-baseballs-color-line--by-tom-dunkel/2013/04/07/98bf6878-8a5d-11e2-a051-6810d606108d_story.html

1935 Bismarck team was one of the best

January 20, 2007 6:00 pm

The 1935 Bismarck semipro baseball team featured two players now in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame and a host of African-American all-stars. It is believed to have been the best semipro team of all time.
In 1934, Bismarck finished with a record of 61-18. However, the owner and manager of the team, Neil Churchill, was not satisfied.
In 1935, he signed the key players from his 1934 team, which included pitcher Barney Morris; catcher Quincy Trouppe; infielders Red Haley, Beef Ringhofer, Joe Desiderato, and Harold Massman; and outfielders Bill Morlan, Bob McCarney and Mike Goetz.
He signed pitcher Satchel Paige, who had appeared in nine games for the Bismarck team in 1933. Churchill also signed Vernon "Moose" Johnson and Charlie Bates, two sluggers with the Western League.
The last key member to join the Bismarck team was Axel "Al" Leary, a young, power-hitting shortstop from Great Falls, Mont.
Pitchers Paige and Morris got off to a terrific start, but Morris began to experience elbow problems in June. With a schedule that included almost a game a day, it became too much to expect Paige to pitch all the time.
To bolster his club, Churchill signed pitcher-catcher Ted "Double-Duty" Radcliffe and infielder Danny Oberholzer, the stars of the Jamestown team in 1934.
Wanting even greater pitching depth, Churchill pulled off a coup when the powerful Kansas City Monarchs came to Bismarck in late July. The star pitcher on the team was Hilton Smith, considered by many the second best African-American pitcher of the time.
When the Monarchs left Bismarck, Smith remained as part of the Bismarck team. With a pitching staff of Paige, Radcliffe, Morris and Smith, Bismarck was almost invincible, winning 28 of 29 games. To improve the team even more, in early August, Churchill signed outfielder Art Hancock, the best player on the Valley City team.
One event in 1935 helped solidify Bismarck's position of the best semipro team in the nation. Newspaperman Raymond "Hap" Dumont was busy organizing the first National Semipro Championship tournament to be held in Wichita, Kan., beginning on Aug. 14.
Dumont sent out invitations to the best teams in the nation. One of the earliest invitations was sent to Churchill, and he quickly accepted. Churchill then upped the number of games that Bismarck would play against quality teams so that his players would be in top form.
Churchill signed two more players for the tournament in Wichita: Chet Brewer and Ed Hendee. Brewer was a premier pitcher for the Kansas City Monarchs who had also been, the ace of the staff for the semipro team in Crookston, Minn., two years earlier. Hendee was a veteran infielder of the Mississippi Valley League who won the batting crown in 1929.
Bismarck was not the only team in the tournament stocking up on key players. Most of the teams enlisted former major league ballplayers or stars from the minor or Negro leagues.
Bismarck played its first game on Aug. 15 as Paige faced the Monroe Monarchs from Louisiana. Paige got in trouble early, and Bismarck trailed 3-2 going into the seventh inning. Bismarck scored four runs and won 6-4. Game two was against the hometown Wichita Waterworks. Bismarck won 8-4.
Paige returned to pitch game three against the United Fuel team from Denver. He limited them to one run and drove in two runs himself for a 4-1 victory. In game four against Shelby, N.C., Brewer pitched a two-hitter winning 7-1. Game five was against the best offensive team in the tournament, the Halliburton Cementers from Duncan, Okla., who were averaging 13 runs a game against their opponents. Paige held their potent offense to one run and struck out 16 batters winning 3-1. Game six against the Omaha V-8s turned into a slugfest for the Bismarck team, who won 15-6.
In game seven, Bismarck once again faced the Halliburton team, who had moved up through the loser's bracket. However, Bismarck's major offensive weapon did not show up. Moose Johnson had gotten drunk the night before and was later found passed out in the street. Regardless, Bismarck won 5-2 and Paige was again the winning pitcher as Bismarck won the tournament.
Many of the players came back to Bismarck in 1936, but the team was not the same without Paige. Bismarck returned to Wichita and won the first five games, but lost game six to Halliburton because Bismarck's star pitcher was too drunk to be effective.
All of the African-Americans on the 1935 Bismarck team went on to become all-stars in the Negro Leagues and likely would have been outstanding players in the major leagues.
Paige and Trouppe eventually made it to the majors but were well past their prime. Churchill returned to his auto dealership and was elected mayor of Bismarck in 1939.
(Written by Curt Eriksmoen and edited by Jan Eriksmoen. Reach the Eriksmoens at cjeriksmoen@;cableone.net)

http://bismarcktribune.com/news/local/bismarck-team-was-one-of-the-best/article_aaeb34e5-8ba3-5737-bacf-8d4bb2d1564a.html


1935 Bismarck Semipros.
Front row, l-r: Joe Desiderato, Axel Leary, Neil Churchill, Danny Oberholzer, Ed Hendee.
Back row, l-r: Hilton Smith, Red Haley, Barney Morris, Satchel Paige, Moose Johnson, Quincy Trouppe, Double Duty Radcliffe.


And for a lot more great information, check a great source of info rarely told -

North Dakota Integrated Baseball History

http://www.pitchblackbaseball.com/northdakotabaseball.html

Recycling Culture - Religously

For God's sake, recycle, say Tel Aviv rabbis

"With a minor effort on our part we can help preserve the environment as well as keep our city and holy land clean and beautiful," top Orthodox rabbis tell their followers, quoting from the scriptures to encourage the communities to participate in city's recycling project. 

Critics of Israel's Orthodox establishment claim it is out of touch with modern life, but apparently those critics haven't visited any Tel Aviv synagogues lately. Synagogues in the Israeli metropolitan are calling on their congregants to make the effort to separate their trash.

A written newsletter signed by Yisrael Meir Lau, Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv and a former chief rabbi of Israel, and Rabbi Moshe Maya, the head of the Zikron Moshe yeshiva in the city and a former Shas Knesset member, quotes Jewish sources that emphasize the importance of protecting the environment. The letter is currently making the rounds in Tel Aviv's Orthodox synagogues.

"Our rabbis teach us of the importance of preserving the environment for our own sakes and for those who come after us," the two rabbis write. The letter also describes the recent joint initiative by the Environmental Protection Ministry and the Tel Aviv Municipality to separate trash and encourage recycling in the city, and urge the faithful to take part in the effort. "With a minor effort on our part we can help preserve the environment as well as keep our city and holy land clean and beautiful ... Please give your hearts and minds to this effort."

Rabbi Maya for his part explains that because recycling bestows value on trash, anyone who throws out trash indiscriminately without separating recyclables is transgressing the Biblical commandment of Bal Taschit (do not destroy). "Through a small effort, we will be saved from transgressing a negative commandment," writes Maya.

Over 250,000 residents from 31 local municipalities currently participate in the Ministry's recycling project and it is estimated that this number will jump to 1.5 million by 2014.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=5165

More Architecture - A Whole Town! Columbus, Indiana

Lot of architecture in Columbus, Indiana -

May 10, 2013

An Indiana Town Where Big Names Built

By NANCY KRIPLEN

Before he helped bring the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen to his hometown to design one of the first contemporary churches in America; before he commissioned Eliel’s son, Eero, to design an elegant midcentury modern house for his young family; and before he turned Columbus, Ind., into a living museum of striking 20th-century modern architecture, J. Irwin Miller lived in a large 19th-century house that could not have been more of a contrast to the Modernist buildings that have put this rural city on the map.

The Italianate brick Irwin-Sweeney-Miller House in which Mr. Miller grew up, built by his great-grandfather Joseph I. Irwin in 1864, is now a bed-and-breakfast called the Inn at Irwin Gardens (608 Fifth Street, 812-376-3663, irwingardens.com). Spending the night there, as my husband and I and several friends did last fall, is a physical immersion (with comfortable beds, chocolates on pillows and thick towels) into the contrasts and diversity that is Columbus.

Unless you are an architecture buff, when you think of Columbus, you are more likely to think of Ohio’s capital, Columbus, not of a southern Indiana city ranked sixth among the nation’s cities in 1991 for its architectural innovation and design by the American Institute of Architects.

For years the Columbus Area Visitors Center has offered bus tours of the city’s innovative public buildings (the Visitors Center lists some 70 structures as “noteworthy”), many designed by a litany of important American architects: I. M. Pei, Harry Weese, Robert A. M. Stern, Richard Meier, Kevin Roche, Robert Venturi, Cesar Pelli and others.

More recently, visitors can experience the architectural gems of this city of about 44,000 residents in two additional ways — by staying at the Irwin-Sweeney-Miller House and by touring the white, marble and glass house, completed in 1957, that Eero Saarinen built for J. Irwin and Xenia Miller.

At the inn, heavily Victorian with paneled walls and Oriental rugs, some furnishings date back to when it was the family’s home. On a small table in the hall off the library is an October 1967 issue of Esquire Magazine with J. Irwin Miller’s photograph on the cover under the headline: “This man ought to be the next president of the United States.” (Instead, Mr. Miller helped persuade Nelson Rockefeller to run.)

It was, in fact, J. Irwin Miller, scion of the Irwin-Miller family and arts patron, who transformed Columbus into an architectural mecca. As head of the Cummins Engine Company for 30 years, Mr. Miller reasoned that extraordinary buildings would help Cummins lure top talent to the rural Midwest. (The company was founded in 1919 by Clessie Cummins, the former driver and mechanic of William Irwin, with money put up by Mr. Irwin, J. Irwin Miller’s great-uncle.)

J. Irwin Miller, who studied at Yale and Oxford, persuaded Eliel Saarinen to build a startlingly modern church, First Christian Church (formerly known as the Tabernacle Church of Christ), dedicated in 1942. Next came a new headquarters for the Irwin Union Bank, designed by Eero Saarinen. In 1957, the Cummins Engine Foundation began paying architectural fees for new schools and public buildings if distinguished architects were chosen from the foundation’s list. This in turn influenced the design of other Columbus buildings.

The surprise that is Columbus often appears suddenly, interspersed among old buildings and houses. Some Modernist buildings are stark and sleek, others playful. Though many are concentrated in the historic downtown area, others like the angular or flat-roofed brick-and-glass elementary schools are scattered on the town’s outskirts.

I. M. Pei’s low, red-brick library on Fifth Street is just down the street and around the corner from the 139-year-old Bartholomew County Courthouse. A short walk from the courthouse is Paul Kennon’s AT&T Switching Station, with red, blue and yellow curved tubular sections resembling giant, colorful crayons. A few blocks away is Kevin Roche’s low, glass-walled Cummins Corporate Headquarters building with vine-covered trellises. A half-moon of glass is the three-story Columbus City Hall designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, also in the center of town.

On the eastern fringe of Columbus, Richard Meier’s two-toned, white-and-gray Clifty Creek Elementary School is carved into a gentle slope. On the north side of the city is Cesar Pelli’s Advanced Manufacturing Center — long, low and functional, with exposed white structural columns. Back closer in town, the Columbus Regional Hospital, a beige brick structure with a green clay tile roof with renovations by Robert A. M. Stern, has a horizontal Prairie School feel, both inside and out.

In 1953, Mr. Miller and his wife had commissioned Eero Saarinen to design a new home for their growing family. This Miller House, considered to be one of the five most important midcentury modern houses still standing in the United States, was given to the Indianapolis Museum of Art after the couple’s deaths. Irwin Miller died in 2004, Xenia in 2008. Now touring of the house is allowed twice daily, but only with small group tours arranged through the Visitors Center (506 Fifth Street, 800-468-6564, columbus.in.us).

Our party of eight, with $20 tickets reserved more than a month in advance, climbed into the van at the Visitors Center. After a five-minute drive, we pulled into the 13.5-acre property to view the work of Saarinen (and the principal design associate Kevin Roche), the interior designer Alexander Girard and the landscape architect Dan Kiley.

In the front entrance, past a small Eames settee, a large panel was strategically placed to initially conceal the living room. Once past the panel, though, we saw the room’s iconic conversation pit with its riot of fuchsia, crimson and pink pillows. (“Stay on the runners, please,” instructed our guide.)

Near the living room’s grand piano is a sleek contemporary music stand, as if ready for an informal musicale. The white walls were a perfect foil for the Millers’ colorful folk art and dazzling art collection that at one point included a Monet painting of waterlilies, which sold at auction for $80.45 million in 2008. Though much of the Millers’ art and some of the furniture has been sold or reclaimed by family members, visitors still can see many of the original furnishings and collections.

After about an hour the Miller House tour was over and we were back at the Visitors Center, itself housed in a remodeled 1864 house. It sits next door to the I. M. Pei library and across the street from Eliel Saarinen’s church. We had come full circle in this remarkable town.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/travel/an-indiana-town-where-big-names-built.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://www.columbus.in.gov/  - Indiana, Columbus city web site

College With Frank Lloyd Wright

Does the building you learn in influence what and/or how you learn?

Florida Southern College campus is all Wright

By Andrea Sachs, Published: November 2, 2012

If I had attended Florida Southern College in Lakeland, my career path would have jagged in an entirely different direction. Instead of choosing a major for the subject matter or the job prospects it offered, I would have based my education on the building. Specifically, which classes — fine arts, physics, criminology, cosmology — were taught in which Frank Lloyd Wright structure.
Famous architects and college campuses groove together as well as spring and fling. Yale flaunts an Eero Saarinen, for example, and Harvard claims a Le Corbusier and a Walter Gropius, the founder of Bauhaus. But FSC occupies a particularly prominent place in the pantheon with its Child of the Sun campus, the world’s only Wright-designed college and the largest single-site collection of his works. Go, FloSoCo; go, FloSoCo!
Founded in Orlando in 1883, the private United Methodist-affiliated college relocated to a 100-acre orange grove on Lake Hollingsworth in 1922, when traditional red brick was au courant. Today’s student body numbers around 2,000, an undergraduates-to-Wright-buildings ratio of roughly 166-to-1. (The proportion shifts slightly if you toss in the three edifices by Robert A.M. Stern, dean of Yale’s School of Architecture, and the 117 graduate students.)
The institution has earned distinctions for its academic standards but, more impressive, it recently received a shout-out from the Princeton Review as the most beautiful campus in the United States (first place in 2011 and 2012). The school also joined the National Historic Landmarks club this year, a limited membership including such lofty sites as the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building and Taliesin West, Wright’s former home and school in Arizona.
Throughout the year, even when students are on holiday and Florida’s summer sun is melting flip-flops, guides lead tours of the grounds. Wright fanciers can also grab a map from the parking lot and go it alone. But you may receive special allowances with a guide, such as the thrill of standing beneath the theater’s acoustically crisp cupola dome and performing your best Olivier-as-Hamlet impression.
“Wright said that he would design buildings that would look like they were coming out of the earth, like a child in the sun,” guide Bill Stephens (class of ’70) said of the architect’s vision. “The name stuck.”
The tour starts, appropriately enough, at the Child of the Sun visitor center, which is housed in the former library, completed in 1946 for $100,000. Like an earnest freshman, I took a seat in the former reading room and listened to Bill’s brief discourse on Wright’s life. He touched on the personal (three wives, three mistresses) and the professional (Prairie-style houses in the Midwest, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Taliesin East in Wisconsin), then turned to the reason we were sitting in a UFO-shaped room with an 18-foot-high pit skylight and no interior walls.
In 1938, FSC president Ludd M. Spivey sent Wright a letter requesting a meeting to build “a great education temple in Florida.” Spivey hoped that the architect’s fame could boost interest and applications. The pair stuck together for nearly 20 years, from the first construction, the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel in 1941, to Wright’s last: the Polk County Science Building, dedicated in 1958, a year after Spivey’s retirement and a year before Wright’s death.
Before heading out into the heat, Bill pointed out some of the library’s Wrightian details: the angled bookshelves that matchy-match the light wells, the Cherokee red concrete floor (oxidized, not painted) and the clerestory window that lets in sharp shards of natural light.
“There were times when the sun came through the east windows,” he said, “that you probably had to wear sunglasses to sit here and read.”
Of the dozen structures, the library took the longest to build because of World War II, which sapped materials and labor. As part of a work-study program, students mixed concrete and hauled blocks in exchange for room, board and tuition. During the crucible of battle, women dominated the construction force.
To create a cohesive whole, Wright designed a 1.5-mile network of covered walkways that string together the disparate buildings. The esplanades, no surprise, aren’t just a pedestrian highway but also a work of art. Geometric cutouts overhead mirror the flower planters below. An oxidized copper trim runs like a dirty ribbon along the upper portions. Abstract shapes on the bases evoke a feature typical of the Florida landscape. To protect Bill’s schtick, I won’t reveal the inspiration, but I will say that the answer is somewhere on this page.
The Danforth Chapel (1955) is less of a puzzle. With a leaded stained-glass wall behind the pulpit and a wimple-like roof, it looks and feels holy. The church is also a sacred site for Wright believers: His spirit soars from red floor to sloped roof and even rests on the cushioned pews.
“Wright was Mr. Posture. Virtually everything he designed was at a 90-degree angle,” Bill said as I tested one of the 550 seats. “As Wright’s furniture goes, these were relatively comfortable.”
As we continued onward, to the science, fine arts and administrative buildings, I felt myself advancing in the Higher Education of Wright. Though I’d visited many of his houses and institutions over the years, at FSC I experienced a number of one-and-onlys: the world’s only Wright-made planetarium and theater-in-the-round, and his largest water feature, the 160-foot-wide Water Dome. And in the category of most quotidian detail ever created by a legend: the window decal.
In the 1950s, before the advent of vertical blinds, people apparently banged into glass windows and doors — including Wright himself. To deter crashes, the architect, who loathed curtains, whipped up stickers resembling, to this observer’s eye, a deconstructed red panda. The school has since incorporated the shape into its logo.
Of course, Wright wasn’t always so practical or sensitive to the client’s needs. For the Water Dome, he envisioned high-powered jets spraying 45-foot-high arcs inward, like synchronized whales all exhaling at once. The design, however, proved too futuristic; the technology didn’t exist in 1948. In the 1960s, the college reduced his work to smaller pools set in a concrete plaza.
In 2007, a restoration project returned the Water Dome to its original state. But the college can activate the fountain only four times a day. Running it full time would violate the county’s water conservation policies.
details
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Child
of the Sun campus
Florida Southern College
948 Johnson Ave.
Lakeland, Fla.
863-680-4597
www.flsouthern.edu/fllwctr
Visitor center open Monday-Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday noon to 4 p.m. (On Nov. 19, hours change to 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.) One-hour basic tour departs four times a day Monday-Saturday and three times on Sunday; $20. Two-hour in-depth tour leaves twice daily; $35. Specialty tours (e.g., Restoration Tour, Behind the Scenes Tour) available on specific dates. Self-guided tour maps available at the visitor center .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/florida-southern-college-campus-is-all-wright/2012/11/01/baeba32a-118c-11e2-a16b-2c110031514a_story.html

Tuscan Food On Tour

Making a business of food culture.......

In Florence, learning the secrets of Tuscan food

By: Jamie Rich The Washington Post, Published on Tue Nov 2 2012

FLORENCE, ITALY — Cameras flash. Mouths drop open, and silence falls over a small group of tourists standing in awe before one of Italy's oldest works of art — a wall of cured meats.

A beastly aroma fills the air. Legs of prosciutto and strings of salami form a canopy inside the old Norcineria, a meat and salami shop in the heart of Florence. An impassioned guide serves up delicious tidbits of gastro-history along with a selection of dried ham, a food dating back to the Romans. And from the first savory bite of finocchiona, a fennel-and-pork salami, the shop is transformed into a food museum, where tourists thrill at eating the art.

Tuscan food: It ranks up there with Michelangelo's David as a reason for travelers to flock to Florence. But getting a taste of a culinary masterpiece requires more than just stumbling out of a gallery and into the nearest trattoria. Tourists expecting to randomly discover a gourmet cafe often learn the hard way that bad food happens, even in Italy.

Real Tuscan cuisine is "better than the best sex you've ever had," according to Antoinette "Toni" Mazzaglia, founder of Taste Florence, a gastronomic excursion that she created in 2008 to introduce tourists to authentic Tuscan cuisine. During the four-hour food crawl, Mazzaglia peppers guests with tidbits of culinary history and woos them with tasty treats at wine shops, bakeries, chocolate makers, gelaterias and market stalls. Her vast knowledge of wine-making and food culture, combined with her exuberant personality, make Taste Florence less of a gourmet crash course than an act of performance art.

-—-

A friend and I meet up with the American expatriate at the city's outdoor San Lorenzo market at around 10 a.m., with my taste buds raring to go. We follow her through a maze of leather goods to the nearby, nearly hidden indoor Central Market. Seizing the morning, Mazzaglia, 35, pierces the emporium's calm with a cascade of animated Italian and laughter.

"Ciao, Toni!" a cacophony of voices welcomes her as she seats me and my friend on a pair of stools in front of Nerbone, a rectangular, green kitchen. The comfort-food institution has served Florentines since 1872, and to beat the long lines of locals that form there every day, Mazzaglia claims real estate early.

"Smell that?" she asks, inhaling deeply. "That's the boiled beef sandwiches."

Spinning around, she flies to the counter to collect our first conquest, bollito di manzo. Minutes later, she presents us with freshly baked rolls piled with thin folds of pink brisket, complemented with a layer of salsa verde and a dash of salsa picante. The flavors and textures meld in a complicated love story — herby, tender, fiery and strong.

After this hearty start, we stop by a pasta stall to watch workers cut fresh strands of golden linguine and pappardelle. Then we slowly wind through the market past troughs of sundried tomatoes, garlic and peppers, to a fruit stand where we cleanse our palates with figs in preparation for a deep dive into cheese and balsamic vinegar.

Perini Gastronomia, a gourmet market shop stocked wall-to-wall with wine, olive oil and balsamic vinegar, provides the backdrop for our next gastronomic invasion. Mazzaglia serves us a glass of Chianti while the shopkeeper prepares a cutting board with three rows of crostini toscani, Italian bread topped with truffle butter, tomato chutney and chicken liver paté. My friend and I moan between bites and do what Mazzaglia dubs the "yummy food boogie," an eyes-closed, raise-the-roof jig.

The two of us are still swooning over the crostini when another board arrives, bearing slices of aged pecorino, or sheep's cheese, bathed in truffle-infused honey, as well as chunks of parmigiano-reggiano drizzled with balsamic vinegar. The pecorino bite unites earthy with sweet, while the parmigiano number pits fruity against tangy, finishing with a subtle kick at the back of the throat.

"That's the neck-gasm," Mazzaglia laughs.

She explains that traditional balsamic vinegar, not to be confused with what we Americans put on our salads, contains no wine vinegar; it's a complicated syrup aged for at least 12 years in small barrels and verified by a European consortium. A small bottle of the luxury dressing costs between about $85 and $200 — or more — depending on how long it has been aged, and Florentines pour it over everything from steak to gelato. In addition to tasting the expensive traditional variety, we sip a plethora of more affordable hybrid balsamics and ponder their subtle undertones. Raisins? Dates? Oh yeah, it's made from grapes.

-—-

Mazzaglia, who keeps a bottle of balsamic vinegar in her purse, fell in love with Italian food and wine in 2002 while studying in Florence with the University of North Carolina. She became a fixture at the Central Market, grocery shopping and befriending chefs and shopkeepers.

"When I told my dad that I was moving to Italy, he said, 'You can't move to a country because the food is good.' And I said, 'What else do you do three times a day besides pee?' " she jokes. "I'm going to spend the rest of my life eating, and I'm going to do it right."

For a decade, she has honed her knowledge by giving wine tours, living at a winery and studying at the Association of Italian Sommeliers. Taste Florence developed as a response to wine tourists complaining about the city's food. She realized that the problem wasn't finding a good restaurant for dinner but knowing where to eat quality breakfast, lunch and snacks.

"They were eating slices of pizza, stale sandwiches, bad gelato and waffles, which aren't even Italian," she says.

She advises guests to step out of their comfort zone when ordering in restaurants, meaning no pizza or spaghetti Bolognese. She also warns them to run from any place that looks like a cafeteria, as well as gelaterias displaying mountains of gelato with figures of "Bart Simpson surfing on top." Quality gelato is made daily in small quantities with fresh, not frozen, ingredients, she explains.

Today, Mazzaglia's foodies trade Bart Simpson and waffles for such fan favorites as baccalà, or salted cod, a traditional dish of Italians who live away from the coast. As we approach her preferred fishmonger, our last stop at the Central Market, Florentine folk music booms and a tattooed man dances from a mound of iced fish to a flour-covered counter to a basket sizzling in oil. Between sips of red wine, he lifts a medley of baccalà and calamari out of the fryer and onto a paper plate for us to share. He pairs cheerful white wine and fresh lemons with our lightly crisped seafood, which leaves us licking our fingers. Well fortified, we hit Florence's back streets shortly after noon.

-—-

For another two hours, we thrill over hybrid Super Tuscan wines at Coquinarius wine bar, squeal over freshly baked pastries at Forno bakery, and chill over creamy gelato at Perche No!, a name that sums up our tasting ethos: Why Not!

At Coquinarius, a cozy alcove just steps from Florence's Duomo cathedral, we settle in for our own religious experience. The tasting begins on a sophisticated note, with Bianca, a crisp, clean white wine that the owners of Coquinarius make from Vermentino and Viognier grapes. We gradually progress to darker, heavier wines. And as we sip a bold Chianti Reserve, Mazzaglia saturates us with information about wine-making and grapes, like the Sangiovese and Trebbiano varieties that make up Chianti.

We end our lesson in a flirtier fashion than we began it, toasting with Lambrusco Cantina Della Volta di Christian Bellei 2009, an exotic sparkling red. After this baptism-by-vino, my companion and I decide that we're nearly fully fledged Florentines, but luckily, we still have more to eat and learn.

Feeling slightly buzzed, we reintroduce food to our systems with fresh pastries from artisan baker Forno. At this family cafe, around the corner from the Basilica di San Lorenzo, a woman in a paper hat serves up magical deep-fried dough balls. The two-bite snack looks like a beignet without sugar but tastes like a summer carnival, with a puffed pillow surrounding a red garden tomato and a sliver of fresh mozzarella cheese. I gobble my ball while standing inside the narrow bakery and suddenly find myself in a vortex of cheek kisses between Mazzaglia and the bakers.

As we move on, each place brings us closer to Tuscan nirvana, but in my mind, one sacrament remains: gelato.

And purity prevails at Perche No!, a gelateria a block from the Piazza della Repubblica that has been whipping up fresh batches of cream and sugar since 1939. Mazzaglia warns us that shops all over the city make mass-produced gelato using artificial powders and emulsifiers, not like the real fruit and dairy that goes into the creations at Perche No! Inside the small, unassuming gelateria, I delight in a medley of decadent flavors, including rose, pistachio, honey and sesame, and cream and black cherries. It takes all the self-control I can muster not to down each silky scoop in its entirety, but I remind myself that the name of the tour is Taste Florence, not Devour Florence.

Sitting at a table outside Vestri, a chocolate maker a short walk from the Duomo that's known for growing its own cocoa, I silently thank myself for having saved some room as Mazzaglia presents us with the crowning masterpiece of the day: a flight of handmade pralines. Flavor combinations of chocolate and chili and coffee and hazelnut send our endorphins soaring, but nothing could prepare us for the splendor of the ganache infused with Earl Grey tea.

Chewing and nodding in unspoken approval, we find there's only one appropriate response — the yummy food boogie.

JUST THE FACTS

SLEEPING Granduomo is a charming hotel with apartment-style rooms and dazzling views of the Duomo. Doubles from $190.

Piazza del Duomo 1/7. 011-39-055-267-0004. granduomo.com. Il Bargello is a simple bed-and-breakfast with modern amenities in central Florence. Doubles from $130. Via dei Pandolfini 33. 011-39-055-215-330. firenze-bedandbreakfast.it

DINING Coquinarius is a casual yet sophisticated wine bar offering inventive salads and fresh pasta with a boutique wine cellar. Entrees start at $9.Via delle Oche 15r. 011-39-055-230-2153. muledei.it/coquinarius.html. Glden View Open Bar is an upscale restaurant serving seafood, meat and fresh pasta with extensive wine cellar, fantastic views and live jazz. Entrees from $18. Via de Bardi 64/58r, Ponte Vecchio. 011-39-333-475-7400. goldenviewopenbar.com. Cantinetta dei Verrazzano is a traditional eatery specializing in stuffed focaccia, meat and cheese plates and its own wines. Entrees from $19. Via dei Tavolini 18r. 011-39-055-268-590. verrazzano.com/en.

DOING Taste Florence is a gastronomic excursion tasting Florence's best food and wine. Florence Food Tour, Monday-Saturday 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. until Nov. 15. Florence Food and Wine Taste Around Town, Monday-Saturday 10:30 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. year-round. Both tours $97 per person. Tour meeting points located near major monuments. Book online or by e-mail at tasteflorence@gmail.com.

011-39-388-169-6835. tasteflorence.com

WEB SURFING firenzeturismo.it/en

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-11-02/lifestyle/35505447_1_food-museum-salami-tourists

Solar Module Manufacturing's Ups And Downs

   More on fluctuations in the market on the solar hemp future -

Chinese solar panel maker Suntech flames out

By Steven Mufson, Published: May 3

BEIJING — Business was going gangbusters for solar module maker Suntech and its chief executive, Shi Zhengrong, just a few years ago. In 2007, Time magazine called him one of the “heroes of the environment.”
In 2008, CNN named Shi “China’s Sunshine Boy.” In 2009, Fortune anointed him “China’s new king of solar.” That year, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman also cited Shi and Suntech as models of China’s green leap forward — which he called “the Sputnik of our day” and a spur for U.S. clean energy policy.
Now, however, the Chinese Sputnik has crashed to Earth, and the Sun King has been toppled. Buffeted by fierce global competition, faced with a worldwide manufacturing glut and hobbled by heavy debt, Suntech’s directors ousted Shi on March 4 and defaulted on $541 million worth of convertible bonds 10 days later. The following week, a Chinese court declared the company bankrupt after a petition from eight Chinese banks. On Wednesday, the company announced that its 2012 revenue had plunged 48 percent from the previous year.
Suntech — which in 2011 was the world’s biggest seller of silicon-based photovoltaic modules — was once valued at $13 billion on the New York Stock Exchange; it is worth less than 1 percent of that today. A news report that Warren Buffett might be eyeing all or part of Suntech lifted the battered share price more than 80 percent in one week, but acquiring Suntech could be a risky bet.
In February, Pavel Molchanov, an analyst with the investment firm Raymond James, called Suntech “a proverbial ‘zombie’ company that perfectly exemplifies the Chinese solar industry’s massive overcapacity and consequently distressed balance sheets.”
The collapse of Suntech has broader significance than the damage inflicted on the company’s shareholders and creditors; it has punctured myths about the strength of China’s solar business — and its ability to depend on government support in a pinch.
Until now, policymakers in China have used subsidies to create a world-leading “green tech” industry that would push the country up the economic value chain. But green tech doesn’t guarantee thriving businesses. In the race for global solar supremacy, world manufacturing capacity has grown to 60 gigawatts, most of it in China. That outpaced solar demand, which is expected to reach about 35 gigawatts this year, enough to power about 26 million homes. So prices of photovoltaic panels have plummeted, and it will take three to five years for overcapacity to shrink, says Bill Wiseman, managing partner of consulting firm McKinsey’s Taipei office.
But China’s government has not rushed to the rescue. Last month, another Chinese solar panel maker, LDK, defaulted on a loan payment, citing cash problems. And Chen Yuan, the outgoing head of the China Development Bank, declared in March that the bank should curtail its solar lending.
In the meantime, the manufacturing of silicon-based solar modules has become a commodity business, producing large volumes and, at best, tiny profit margins for products that are virtually indistinguishable to consumers. Innovation took a back seat to expansion, particularly in China. “People are fighting tooth and nail for the last penny of margin,” Molchanov said in a recent interview. Factories making clothes or toys are doing better.
The rise and the fall
The rise of Suntech was a rags-to-riches story for its founder. Given up for adoption by destitute parents in a farming area, Shi excelled at school and obtained a master’s degree before moving to Australia in 1989 on an exchange program. He accepted a scholarship to do solar cell research at the University of New South Wales, quickly earned a PhD and became deputy research director of a university spinoff developing next-generation solar technology, according to an article written for Time magazine by his patron and professor Martin Green.
In 2001, Shi moved back to China, using $6 million in seed money from the Wuxi local government to start Suntech. At the time, Wuxi, with the blessing of the central government, was turning itself into a technology center, part of a broader nationwide effort to climb the manufacturing ladder. In addition to cash, it provided Suntech with land and tax benefits as well as cheap electricity.
Like other solar module manufacturers, Suntech took advantage of generous government subsidies in Germany and later in other countries to boost sales. In December 2005, Suntech went public, becoming the first private Chinese company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Within four years, Shi was a billionaire. In 2011, Suntech, with sales of
$3 billion, was the world’s biggest maker of solar panels. And it set up an assembly facility in Arizona.
One business adviser recalls the charismatic Shi showing up for a meeting in a Bentley. Shi said he didn’t want to be ostentatious, so he left the Rolls-Royce at home, according to the account.
But Shi wasn’t the only one jumping into the solar business; it became a classic bubble. In China alone, there are hundreds of manufacturers. Most are low-cost and low-quality, but there are a handful of giants with prodigious capabilities, such as Yingli and Trina. China has about two-thirds of the world’s solar panel manufacturing capacity. China alone, theoretically, could supply all of the world’s solar demand and there would be no room for U.S., German, Japanese or Taiwanese companies. Suntech tried to distinguish itself with its Pluto technology, a manufacturing process that allowed the cells to convert sunlight into energy more efficiently. But other companies also are setting new records for efficiency.
“Ten years ago, it was Suntech that was really a first mover in building China’s solar industry, and Dr. Shi at the time was a visionary of sorts,” Molchanov says. “He helped create this low-cost manufacturing industry in China.” And, for a time, Suntech was successful, emerging from the 2009 slowdown.
Then, just as Suntech became the world’s largest solar panel manufacturer, the European debt crisis hit. Profit margins collapsed, and customers’ unpaid bills piled up. In June 2012, a puzzled Citigroup analyst noted in a report that as major countries such as Germany and Italy sharply reduced subsidies, Chinese manufacturers led by Suntech boosted capacity 30 percent, “only exacerbating the excess supply conditions.” The report said that “module prices are likely to remain below Suntech’s production costs for the foreseeable future.”
Shi relinquished his chief executive position but remained executive chairman. Still, he was upbeat. He blogged, “Do not despair. This is a necessary rite of passage for our maturing industry.” He brushed aside criticism that Suntech had expanded too quickly, saying, “The world couldn’t afford to wait a hundred years to solve our planet’s energy and environmental crisis.”
Nine months later, he was ousted. In a statement at the time, he called the move “misconceived and unlawful.” He said the board members “are not focused on the issues most important at hand and are not acting in accordance with the best interest of the company.”
In the red
Suntech is not unique. Most Chinese solar panel manufacturers have been losing money. And some manufacturers in the United States and Germany also have gone bankrupt.
But Suntech had a lot of debt, incurred during its rapid expansion. It also ran into trouble when the 560 million euros ($734 million) of bonds pledged as loan collateral by a majority-owned affiliate turned out not to exist. The affiliate had promoted projects in Spain and Italy that used Suntech products. Regulatory agencies in the United States and Europe are conducting fraud investigations.
“Everyone in the industry faces the same challenges,” Molchanov said. “But what killed Suntech had nothing to do with the technology or the problems with solar in Europe. It was the balance sheet.” Suntech had borrowed more than $2 billion, from the Bank of China, the China Development Bank and even the International Finance Corp. Suntech needed to borrow just to pay interest.
Meanwhile, in late 2011, a group of U.S. solar panel manufacturers filed an anti-dumping case and won tariffs against Chinese firms. U.S. statistics indicate a sharp drop in imports from China, though some Chinese-made panels might be coming through third countries.
“We believe Suntech suffers from the same unsustainable, distortive industry factors that confront everyone: China’s dumped pricing and massive overbuilding,” said Ben Santarris, a spokesman for rival SolarWorld USA, a subsidiary of Germany-based SolarWorld. “Chinese companies can sell below their costs for only so long before they either go out of business or the Chinese government props them up, extending the anti-competitive problem.”
For years, investors have assumed that Chinese solar companies would be bailed out by the Chinese government, and Suntech and its battered shareholders and bondholders are still hoping for a rescue. A large portion of the bonds in default, currently selling for about 30 cents on the dollar, are held by U.S. private equity firms, which probably bought the bonds at deep discounts.
But the Chinese government may not come to the rescue. Indeed the government’s support for solar energy in China has grown tepid, despite an ambitious goal of adding about six gigawatts a year for the next decade. The National Development and Reform Commission approved a feed-in tariff for solar power — a guaranteed fixed-rate payment to developers — of 15 cents a kilowatt hour, but no one wants to pay for it. The state electricity company, State Grid, isn’t allowed to raise rates for households. But the central government hasn’t put the subsidy in the budget, either. In addition, connecting to the grid isn’t easy.
Lacking market relief, Suntech investors hope the municipal government of Wuxi, where Suntech is based and where many of its more than 10,000 workers were employed, might come to the company’s aid. According to a Chinese news report, fewer than 3,000 of the workers are still on the job. (Suntech would not comment for this report.) For Wuxi’s municipal government, a rescue would require a lot of money without support from the central government, which wants, at least in principle, a consolidation in the industry.
The China Development Bank has stepped in to help solar firms before. JinkoSolar, which posted a loss of $248 million last year, said the Guangdong branch of the China Development Bank agreed in December to lend it $1 billion over five years. In April, the bank gave JinkoSolar a 15-year loan for nearly $60 million.
In January, the bank gave a $71 million lifeline to another Chinese solar firm, LDK.
Suntech is thought to still owe more than $400 million to the China Development Bank. But the bank, whose rates were never terribly low, hasn’t stepped forward, and LDK is scrambling to find an investor.
Suntech’s woes have fed on one another. Solar demand is strong in new markets such as the Middle East, Thailand and Australia, as well as the United States. But when a company’s survival is uncertain, that hurts business. Solar panels typically carry 20-year warranties, which won’t be worth anything if the company goes out of business. That might be one reason that Suntech’s sales fell 18 percent in the third quarter compared with a year earlier, according to its Securities and Exchange Commission filing, while most other companies’ sales were rising.
Shi’s replacement, David King, a financial expert with experience at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Bechtel and Walt Disney Imagineering, is trying to engineer a restructuring but would not comment. The company will meet with creditors in Wuxi on May 22 and separately in Europe.
So far, however, no reorganization plan has emerged, and the company’s future remains dim.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/chinese-solar-panel-maker-flames-out/2013/05/03/9b7f29d6-ac2c-11e2-9493-2ff3bf26c4b4_story.html

Electric Car Market Fluctuations

As previously posted about market changes in Northern California marijuana market and an up coming post about the solar panel market, the following article on Tesla's current good fortunes reminds us that the path to a solar hemp future is subject to the manipulations of the market whether those manipulations are real (basic supply & demand) or manufactured (playing stocks short can drive price up when really it ought to be coming down).

Tesla’s market value soars, but some see a bubble

By Steven Mufson, Published: May 16

Tesla Motors is on a remarkable run for a company that not long ago seemed to be sputtering.
The luxury electric-car maker’s flagship sedan, the Model S, won Motor Trend’s 2013 car of the year honors, then earned a rare, near-perfect rave from Consumer Reports.
In the past month, Tesla’s stock value has doubled to more than $90 a share. That gives the California-based company a total market value of $10.6 billion, greater than that of Italian automaker Fiat, worth less than $8 billion.
Such dramatic success, and the brash confidence of founder Elon Musk, has some fans calling Tesla the first successful new American car maker in more than a generation.
But some analysts say the electrifying rise is not what it seems.
Take that Fiat comparison: In the first quarter of this year, Fiat sold 1 million cars and made a $40 million profit. Tesla sold 4,900 cars and, not counting the sale of regulatory credits under California law, lost $53 million, or more than $10,000 per car.
Whether or not Tesla survives or thrives has become an important test of U.S. policy and automotive strategy. The Energy Department gave it a $465 million low-interest loan; President Obama has delivered generous subsidies for electric vehicles.
While the sale of electric cars will fall far short of Obama’s goals, Musk is taking an unconventional approach to establishing his brand. Instead of trying like the Chevy Volt to compete with moderately priced cars, Musk has wooed wealthy buyers with a sleek, four-door sedan that handles like a sports car and can cost more than $80,000. He plans to work his way down toward the mass market with future models.
Doubters have been waiting for Tesla to run out of cash, which it seemed poised to do last year, but it hasn’t. And Musk is moving to take advantage of the high stock price. On Wednesday, Tesla announced that it would raise $830 million in new stock and debt offerings, which it would use to repay ahead of schedule its oft-criticized loan from the Energy Department. Musk said he himself would buy $100 million of the offerings, and the stock climbed still higher.
But some analysts still say the company’s share price is a bubble on a par with foamy tech-era stocks. It is selling for roughly 600 times its estimated 2013 earnings.
Moreover, Tesla would have booked a first-quarter loss without the $68 million sale of special credits created by California regulations that reward makers of “zero-emission” vehicles. The ZEV credits have provided more assistance to Tesla than have generous federal incentive programs.
California’s Air Resources Board has mandated that large-volume sellers of cars must together meet a minimum quota of 7,500 zero-emission vehicles this year and next. Those who fall short must buy credits from those who produce more than their share.
Tesla’s strategy of building cars with 200-mile ranges dovetails with the ZEV rules, which say that cars with a 100-mile range get three credits per vehicle, while those with a 200-mile range get four. Long-range cars with 15-minute recharging capability get five credits, and Musk has hinted that a faster recharging device will soon be unveiled.
Rival companies privately lament that they have been effectively subsidizing Tesla. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said in an April 26 report that Tesla made $40.5 million, or $13,900 a car, through the sale of ZEV and other credits to other car companies in 2012. Jones estimates that Tesla could earn $250 million this way in 2013. In the first quarter of this year, ZEV credit sales accounted for 12 percent of Tesla revenues, Musk said.
However, that calculus will be changing, said Menahem Anderman, president of Advanced Automotive Batteries, which reports on the industry. By the end of the year, the six major automakers that need to meet the 2013-2014 California mandate will all have their own electric vehicles available, Anderman said.
Musk said in a letter to shareholders that “we expect [sales of credits] to decline significantly in future quarters” and that the price of credits had already fallen. But he said that Tesla plans to have a 25 percent gross profit margin “assuming zero ZEV revenue.”
At the moment, that is just one of several uncertainties facing Tesla. J.P. Morgan’s auto analysts said in a May 9 report that “we continue to have some concerns regarding the market appeal of a more mass-market electric vehicle” and worry that Tesla could be restricted to the relatively small luxury-car niche.
Yet automobile analysts are along for the ride with Tesla. After Tesla’s share price zoomed past his target, Morgan Stanley’s Jonas on Tuesday more than doubled his price target to $103 a share from $47. Tesla shares closed Thursday at $92.25, up another 9 percent. (Morgan Stanley is one of the co-managers of the Tesla debt offering.)
Some experts who believe the stock is overblown say that demand for Tesla cars “could materially wane” after a finite number of early adopters are satisfied.
J.P. Morgan’s analysts also said that Tesla “still has its work cut out for it” to meet Musk’s target of a 25 percent gross profit margin. The gross margin in the first quarter stood at 5.7 percent after excluding ZEV credits.
Anderman added that Tesla still doesn’t have a track record that reliably tells consumers (and investors) how long batteries will last, how much it will cost to service them, or how much that will affect resale value. The company has made some guarantees that could prove costly to deliver.
Analysts also point to some positive signs for Tesla. It lowered costs, produced more cars than expected, hasn’t reported major reliability problems and produced battery packs for Toyota and Daimler-Benz. Musk forecasts the sale of 21,000 cars, which would give Tesla nearly 10 percent of the market for passenger cars costing at least as much as Tesla’s base price.
The company’s major shareholders, after Musk, include Fidelity Investments, Morgan Stanley, Abu Dhabi Water & Electric and Daimler.
Then there is the Musk factor. Born in South Africa, he made a fortune in Zip2, a firm that sold software for online content, and PayPal. Since then, he has founded SpaceX for commercial space flights, Tesla Motors, and SolarCity, which designs, finances and installs solar energy systems.
Like many auto industry executives, Musk has a flair for salesmanship and tweets several times a day. He has introduced generous financing plans for his products, opened up about three dozen spiffy dealerships and fiercely attacked a negative piece about the car’s range in the New York Times.
For now, he has prevailed over the naysayers. Tesla has no liquidity problems like those that forced Fisker Automotive, another electric-car company, to halt production. And its product’s reviews have been good. “So is the Tesla Model S the best car ever?” Consumer Reports asked last week. “We wrestled with that question long and hard. It comes close.”
All the enthusiasm has made life difficult for short sellers, who had been betting heavily on Tesla stumbling. (Short sellers borrow and sell shares of a company and make money if the price falls before they have to return the shares.) As recently as February, shares being shorted amounted to about a third of Tesla’s free-trading stock. Now it's down to about 11 percent.
As the share price rises, however, short sellers often scramble to cover themselves before the price rises even further. When they do that, short sellers can drive a stock price even higher in what is known as a short squeeze.
That might account for part of the recent run-up in Tesla’s price. Musk, who has a stake in Tesla worth nearly $2.5 billion, has been taunting the short sellers on Twitter. “Seems to be some stormy weather over in Shortville these days,” Musk wrote on April 25.
Some analysts think the short sellers’ belief that Tesla’s horizons are limited might be proven right — in the long run.
Anderman said that “in two to four years they can be looking at a stagnant or shrinking market, increased service and warrantee costs, and reduced revenue from ZEV credit sales and battery pack sales.” But, he said, “in the short [term, it] looks exciting and what they have done so far is brilliant.”


http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/teslas-market-value-soars-but-some-see-a-bubble/2013/05/16/7589d84c-bcd1-11e2-97d4-a479289a31f9_story_1.html

Herbal Research - California State University Researches Marijuana

Humboldt State University Launches Research Institute Devoted To Pot

November 26, 2012 12:14 PM

ARCATA, Calif. (AP) — A public university located in one of California’s prime pot-growing regions has formed an academic institute devoted to marijuana.
The Humboldt Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research at Humboldt State University plans to sponsor scholarly lectures and coordinate research among 11 faculty members from fields such as economics, geography, politics, psychology and sociology.
The Times-Standard of Eureka reports that one professor is studying recent campaigns to legalize marijuana, while another is investigating the environmental effects of pot cultivation.
Sociology professor Josh Meisel tells the newspaper that the institute is probably the first dedicated to examining marijuana through the lens of multiple disciplines.
The University of California has a medical marijuana research center in San Diego that conducted scientific studies on the drug’s health effects until its state funding ran out.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

 http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2012/11/26/humboldt-state-university-launches-research-institute-devoted-to-pot/

Marijuana institute takes shape at HSU; third in a series of lectures Tuesday

Luke Ramseth/The Times-Standard

Posted:   11/25/2012 02:38:26 AM PST

Updated:   11/25/2012 02:38:27 AM PST

A first-of-its-kind academic institute focused strictly on marijuana issues is taking shape at Humboldt State University this fall semester. The interdisciplinary institute, made up primarily of HSU faculty, is hosting a series of lectures that are open to the public and digging into marijuana-centric research in several academic fields.
”They finally tapped into something that's a big local concern and part of the identity here,” said politics professor Jason Plume, who hosts a talk on marijuana regulatory reform Tuesday night at 5:30 p.m. in HSU's Native Forum.
The lectures have focused on hot marijuana-themed topics in our area -- the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, and the effects of cultivation on local wildlife. An October symposium gathered Humboldt County Sheriff Mike Downey, District Attorney Paul Gallegos, two county supervisors and a Fish and Game biologist to talk environmental impacts of marijuana production, and possible policy changes.
Plume will speak Tuesday night on recent marijuana legalization efforts in several states, and the regulatory structure needed for them to succeed.
Sociology professor Josh Meisel, who co-chairs the institute, said faculty members started discussing the idea -- now officially titled the Humboldt Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research -- in July 2010. Around that time, Meisel said, marijuana became a more publicly and academically accepted topic to research. He said there was a “culture-shift” after Proposition 19, the marijuana legalization initiative, was on the California ballot in 2010.

There are other American universities with illicit drug research institutes, Meisel said, but none solely devoted to marijuana. Eleven HSU faculty members are listed on the institute's website.
”Across the county, there was the tendency to ignore the 'green elephant' in the room,” Meisel said. “People across the spectrum became concerned after Proposition 19.”
Meisel said he and other university faculty saw something lacking from the discussions surrounding legalization.
”With these public discussions, there were a lot more questions than there were answers,” he said, which motivated some HSU faculty like himself to go after the topic in an academic context -- not one steeped in “conjecture” and “wild claims.”
Erick Eschker, an HSU economics professor and the institute's other co-chair, said he received calls from the media and the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, asking him about the effects of legalization on the economy when Proposition 19 hit the ballot.
”Then it hit me that this just isn't a local issue,” said Eschker, who is in the process of gathering and studying marijuana production data in the county, and working to show its correlation with local employment.
Eschker said the institute is not about advocacy. It's a place where top-notch research is done, he said, and a place people can go to get their marijuana questions answered. And people are beginning to hear of it. Eschker said he's received a call from New York Magazine and several researchers from around the country.
”The stigma for marijuana research is pretty much lifted,” said Anthony Silvaggio, a sociology professor who is studying the environmental effects of marijuana cultivation, both indoors and outdoors. He's interviewed growers to find out about their practices and pesticides they use, and is working to collect data on pesticides and fertilizers found at marijuana grows.
He and a graduate student recently compiled a video tour of 600 outdoor grow sites around Humboldt County using Google imagery to show the scope of the environmental marijuana problem. Silvaggio said he hopes the institute will help him get more funding for the research, something he says has been hard to come by in the past.
Meisel said despite the institute's all-academic focus, he doesn't want to shy away from the Humboldt County “pot” identity.
”Instead of distance ourselves from that identity, why don't we own that in a proactive way and define the terms?” he asked.
He said the institute is still working to get the word out about its existence. It's not a household name yet -- Meisel didn't get calls from national media after legalization was recently passed in Colorado and Washington, for example.
The focus is on the speaker series to get the word out, and pursuing research funding opportunities. The institute is also working to create a special section of the HSU library devoted to marijuana.
”Our goal is to try and aid some more informed policy-level decisions,” Meisel said.
Plume's lecture Tuesday night will be the third in a series of seven marijuana lectures being held at HSU this year. The next four will touch on topics ranging from Dutch drug policy to the impacts of legalization on the local economy.
Plume has been researching recent marijuana movements, including the successful legalization efforts in Washington and Colorado, and an unsuccessful proposition in Oregon. He interviewed campaign directors of legalization efforts in the three states and Arcata Vice Mayor Shane Brinton about Measure I -- the electricity grow tax -- for his research.
In his lecture Tuesday, he said he plans to discuss marijuana reform, advocacy and the regulatory structure that needs to be in place before legalization efforts can succeed. Both Washington and Colorado were prepared, he said, with a committee and structures already in place that could craft a regulatory scheme for marijuana. He said Oregon had less of a plan in place, and it was somewhat fitting that legalization did not pass there.
Plume said the institute's formation signals a recent acceptance of marijuana as a legitimate area of study. When he started his Ph.D. dissertation at Syracuse University, entitled “Cultivating Reform: Nixon's Illicit Substance Control Legacy, Medical Marijuana Social Movement Organizations, and Venue Shopping,” it was hard to get people on board. That was in 2008, and he said that skeptical sentiment toward his marijuana research continued into 2010.
Plume said he is now in a place receptive to his research, and he thinks it may have played a part in his being hired at HSU prior to this semester. The institute is still putting together the “nuts and bolts,” he said, and trying to find cohesiveness.
Eventually, Eschker said, he'd like to host a big marijuana-themed conference for national and international marijuana researchers.
”If anyone is going to have a marijuana institute, it really should be Humboldt State,” he said. “It has the potential to be a world-class institute, and we're just getting going.”

Luke Ramseth can be reached at 441-0509 or lramseth@times-standard.com.

IF YOU GO:

What: Marijuana regulatory reform lecuture by professor Jason Plume
When: 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m., Tuesday
Where: HSU's Native Forum; Behavioral and Social Sciences room 162
More marijuana-themed lectures continue through the end of the spring semester at HSU. For a complete schedule, go to www.humboldt.edu/hiimr/about.html

http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_22062798 

The Solar Impulse - Solar Powered Airplane

The Solar Impulse

Solar plane lands in Ariz., 1st leg of major trip

Posted: May 04, 2013 3:49 AM EDT Updated: May 04, 2013 4:09 AM EDT 

By HAVEN DALEY and BOB SEAVEY

PHOENIX (AP) - A solar-powered airplane landed in Phoenix early Saturday morning after flight from California that included several hours in the air after sundown.
The Solar Impulse set down about 12:30 a.m. at Sky Harbor Airport after flying, completing the first leg of a planned cross-country trip that its co-pilot described as a "milestone" in aviation history.
The Solar Impulse - considered the world's most-advanced sun-powered plane - left Moffett Field in Mountain View near San Francisco just after dawn Friday.
Its creators said the trip is the first attempt by a solar airplane capable of flying day and night without fuel to fly across America.
Video posted on the expedition's website showed a smiling pilot Bertrand Piccard shortly after landing as he waved to wellwishers and held up a flag emblazoned with the Solar Impulse name.
"It's a little bit like being in a dream," Piccard said as he stepped on the tarmac.
From Phoenix, it plans to travel to Dallas-Fort Worth airport in Texas, Lambert-St. Louis airport, Dulles airport in the Washington area and New York's John F. Kennedy airport. Each flight leg will take about 19 to 25 hours, with 10-day stops in each city.
"All the big pioneers of the 20th century have tried to fly coast to coast across America," co-pilot and one of the plane's founders, Piccard, said before the flight. "So now today we're trying to do this, but on solar power with no fuel with the first airplane that is able to fly day and night just on solar power."
The plane is powered by about 12,000 photovoltaic cells that cover massive wings and charge its batteries.
The delicate, single-seat Solar Impulse flies around 40 mph and can't go through clouds. It weighs about as much as a car, making it vulnerable to bad weather.
Its creators said solar planes will never replace fuel-powered commercial flights. But the goal is to showcase the potential of solar power.
"What we look for is to have a new milestone in this very exciting history of aviation that can attract interest of the people, of the political world, of the media and show that with renewable energies and clean technology for energy efficiency, we can achieve impossible things," Piccard said.
The plane has previously impressed audiences in Europe.
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Haven Daley reported from Mountain View, Calif.

http://www.wsls.com/story/22160105/solar-plane-lands-in-ariz-1st-leg-of-major-trip


http://www.solarimpulse.com