By Steven Case, 2010.
NC Government and Heritage Library.
Greenville is the county seat of Pitt County. It was established by statute in 1771 (incorporated 1774) as Martinsborough, named in honor of Josiah Martin, the last Royal Governor of the colony. The town was renamed Greenesville in 1786, in honor of the Revolutionary War general Nathanael Greene, and the name was gradually shortened to Greenville.
Originally peopled by the Tuscarora Indians, the land around Greenville was slowly re-settled in the early 18th century by immigrants moving up the Tar River or down from Virginia and the Albemarle region. Early settlers engaged largely in subsistence farming and some tobacco cultivation. By the 1840's, the area had developed a small but thriving cotton culture, and the town, situated at the intersection of the river and the plank road from Wilson, became a regional link between the Piedmont and the trading cities on the coast during the antebellum years.
Greenville's status as a transportation hub on the Tar River made it a potential target for operations during the Civil War. Though no major fighting occurred, the town was fortified and entrenched, and several skirmishes took place in and around it. Recovery from the war was slow, and because of war casualties and out-migration, the population of the city dropped to about 600 by 1870. Tobacco processing and storage increased in the 1880's, and this factor, coupled with the arrival of the railroad, created favorable conditions for expansion, so that by the turn of the century the population had reached more than 4000..
Education--always a priority in the town, with its first academy chartered in 1787--was considerably enhanced when the state chartered the East Carolina Teachers Training School in 1907. Within a few years, the Training School was a four year college, and by 1967 had become East Carolina University, adding the Brody School of Medicine in the 1970s.
Culturally diverse and vibrant, the city currently plays host to the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival and the Billy Taylor Jazz Festival, as well as being the home base for many of the top BMX riders in the world.
Greenville's estimated population
1980: 35,740
Greenville's land area (square miles):
1980: 15.03
Data from the NC State Data Center:
References and additional resources:
"About Greenville." City of Greenville.
Bratton, Mary Jo Jackson, 1991. Greenville: Heart of the East. Chatsworth, Ca.: Windsor Publications.
Greenville-Pitt County Chamber of Commerce.
Kammerer, Roger. "Yours if you come." Greenville-Pitt County NC Convention and Visitors Bureau.
"The New Breed of Greenville" ESPN.
Pitt County Historical Society, 1982. Chronicles of Pitt County, North Carolina, 1982. Winston-Salem: Hunter Publishing Co.
Powell, William Stevens, and Michael R. Hill. 2010. The North Carolina gazetteer: a dictionary of Tar Heel places and their history. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. p. 218.
Williams, Thomas, ed., 1974. A Greenville Album: The Bicentennial Book. Greenville: ERA Press.
"Seal of the City of Greenville." From 2010 Citizens Handbook, City of Greenville, NC.
"Steamboat on River" Photograph no. N_74_8_98. From the North Carolina State Archives, Non-Textual Materials unit.
Case, Steven
Government & Heritage Library, State Library of North Carolina.
22 October 2010 | Case, Steven


Astonished to Wake by Julie Suk
Jacar Press
17.95, paperback
Available from the publisher
"The poetry of Julie Suk is at once deceptively spare and metaphorically rich, and the sensual mystery of her perfectly pitched and etched lines is haunting, elemental, and wild,"
 - R. T. Smith
In her sixth collection, Julie Suk continues to write poems that are deeply sensuous and unflinching.
"Oh the things we would all say to the stars in the sky if we found ourselves alone in a lifeboat at sea."
 - Charles Simic, former Poet Laureate of the United States
Julie Suk is the author of five previous volumes of poetry. The Angel of Obsession won the University of Arkansas Poetry Competition, the Roanoke-Chowan Award, and was on the short list for the Poets Prize. The Dark Takes Aim (Autumn House Press) was awarded the Brockman-Campbell and the Oscar Arnold Young awards. Suk is also a recipient of the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry magazine, and received the Irene Honeycutt Lifetime Achievement Award from Central Piedmont Community College. She was formerly a managing editor of Southern Poetry Review, and co-editor of Bear Crossings and the Anthology of North American Poets.


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New voice for New Zealand's Umpires
New Zealand is leading the way with a Netball world first in advocating for those in control of the game with the establishment of a New Zealand Netball Umpires' Association.
A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed off between Netball New Zealand (NNZ) and the newly formed New Zealand Netball Umpires' Association (NZNUA), with a key objective to support the country's High Performance Umpires.
NNZ Chief Executive Jennie Wyllie said it was a significant move which would create structure and ensure a closer working relationship between NNZ and the NZNUA.
"It is important that, like the players who have the Players' Association, there was a voice for the Umpires who could support and advocate for them," she said.
"We recognise the importance of quality High Performance Umpiring in New Zealand, which will also have a significant benefit on the international game."
She said the relationship would ensure that the two parties would work more closely together with the best interests of the game in mind.
"New Zealand has a committed group of officials and we want to make sure that our Umpires are the best and most respected Umpires in the world."
The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) would also provide the terms and conditions on which contracted Umpires would officiate in elite competitions in New Zealand.
Experienced international umpire Jono Bredin, who will head the NZNUA, said it was an exciting initiative which would not only strengthen ties with NNZ but also promote the role of Umpiring in Netball throughout the country.
"It is important that we continually attract new Umpires but also work hard to retain those who are dedicated at all levels by advancing their interests and welfare," he said.
"I believe there is an understanding that our elite Umpires are high performance athletes and I think this relationship will underpin the importance of having high quality Umpiring in netball in this country."
The MOU was signed off between the NNZ and the NZNUA in February to cover the next 12 months when it will be reviewed.
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Home " Sports " NHL Eastern Conference Final: Tampa Bay vs. Rangers - Game 7
NHL Eastern Conference Final: Tampa Bay vs. Rangers - Game 7
May 29, 2015 •
It's come to game 7, and it's anybody's game. The Tampa Bay Lightning and New York Rangers have been wildly offensive in Eastern Conference final which has had it's ups and downs and exciting OT surprises.
After six games, both teams have combined to score his 40 goals. Outside the 2-1 Rangers win in Game 1 and 2-0 Lightning win in Game 5, the games have looked like baseball scores of 6-2, 6-5, 5-1 and 7-3. They are still 29 goals away from breaking the imfamous Oilers' record and going into Game 7 Friday night, the players probably want to keep it that way and not get into a run and gun type of play.
"We have to go in there with a 1-0 mentality," said Lightning defenceman Victor Hedman. "I think it's a matter of playing better defence," said Rangers forward Rick Nash. "We're going to get a big push from the other team, and we're going to make sure we're defensively sound."
The Lightning and the Rangers are averaging 6.6 goals per game and have kept the red goal light burning brightly. In the West, the Anaheim Ducks and Chicago Blackhawks have averaged 6.2 goals per game. In comparison, the two leading offensive teams during the regular season (Tampa Bay and Dallas) averaged a combined 6.3 goals per game. So this series is explosive. Usually, the playoffs are a time when scoring goes down. Coaches are typically trying to coach to prevent goals, at the same time the officials put their whistles away allowing players to dictate the flow.
The Lightning and Rangers have ranked first and third, in goals per game, with Steven Stamkos finishing second with 43 goals in the regular season, and Nash, third with 42 goals. Tampa Bay versus New York has been an awesome ride, with so many lead changes, odd-man rushes, breakaways and highlight-reel goals. It's been exactly what the NHL needed: an exciting series that will definitey provide a worthy competitor for the Stanley Cup. This hockey has been a pleasure to watch.
The Eastern Conference champion will play the winner of Saturday's Game 7 of the Western Conference Final between the Ducks and the Chicago Blackhawks in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final, which is expected to hit the ice Wednesday, June 3.
This game will probably come down to the goaltenders. Rangers' Lundqvist is phenomenal in Game 7s, only giving up five goals total in winning six straight since suffering his lone Game 7 defeat to Washington in 2009.
Tampa Bay's Ben Bishop will be playing in the second Game 7 of his career, the first of which he won in the opening round against the Detroit Red Wings.
Who's side will Lady Luck be on? The team that scores first and can carry it through 60 minutes.
Our Pick: The Tampa Bay Lightning


Conductor, Artist of the past
Nationalities : Italy
Representation :
Claude Debussy: La Mer (Lucerne Festival Orchestra,...
Claudio Abbado - GIOACCHINO ROSSINI - Ouvertures
Friedrich Gulda & Claudio Abbado - Mozart: Piano Concerto...
L'ORCHESTRA - Claudio Abbado
 Abbado 2004
Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 3 (Brendel, Abbado)
Cecilia Bartoli & Claudio Abbado,Exsultate ,Jubilate...
Claudio Abbado, moved after Mozart Requiem in Lucerne...
Verdi - Requiem: Dies Irae (Claudio Abbado, Berlin...
Mahler - Symphony No 4 - Abbado
Claudio Abbado, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (Italian pronunciation: [ˈklaudjo abˈbaːdo]; 26 June 1933 - 20 January 2014) was an Italian conductor. One of the most celebrated and respected conductors of the 20th century, particularly in the music of Gustav Mahler, he served as music director of the La Scala opera house in Milan, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Vienna State Opera, founder and director of Lucerne Festival Orchestra, music director of European Union Youth Orchestra and principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra.
Family history and early life
The Abbado family for several generations enjoyed both wealth and respect. Abbado's great-grandfather squandered the family fortune and reputation by gambling. His son, Abbado's grandfather, became a professor at the University of Turin.His grandfather re-established the family's reputation and also showed talent as an amateur musician.
Born in Milan, Italy, Claudio Abbado was the son of violinist and composer conductor Michelangelo Abbado, and the brother of the musician Marcello Abbado (born 1926). His father, a professional violinist and a professor at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory, was his first piano teacher. His mother also was an adept pianist. Marcello Abbado later became a concert pianist and teacher at the Rossini Conservatory in Pesaro. His sister also exhibited talent in music, but did not pursue a musical career after her marriage. His other brother later became a successful architect.
Abbado's childhood encompassed the Nazi occupation of Milan. During that time, Abbado's mother spent time in prison for harbouring a Jewish child. This period solidified his anti-fascist political sentiments. However, his musical interests also developed, with attendance at performances at La Scala,as well as orchestral rehearsals in Milan led by such conductors as Arturo Toscanini and Wilhelm Furtwängler. He later recalled that Toscanini's periods of abusive behaviour to musicians in rehearsal repelled him. Other conductors who influenced him as a child were Victor de Sabata and Rafael Kubelík. It was not until hearing Antonio Guarnieri's conducting of Claude Debussy's Nocturnes that Abbado resolved to become a conductor himself. At age 15, he met Leonard Bernstein, who commented, "You have the eye to be a conductor."
Musical education and early engagements
Abbado studied piano, composition, and conducting at the Milan Conservatory, and graduated with a degree in piano in 1955. The following year, he studied conducting with Hans Swarowsky at the Vienna Academy of Music, on the recommendation of Zubin Mehta. Abbado and Mehta both joined the Academy chorus to be able to watch such conductors as Bruno Walter and Herbert von Karajan in rehearsal. He also spent time at the Chigiana Academy in Siena.
In 1958, Abbado made his conducting debut in Trieste. That summer, he won the international Serge Koussevitzky Competition for conductors at the Tanglewood Music Festival, which resulted in a number of operatic conducting engagements in Italy. In 1959, he conducted his first opera, The Love for Three Oranges, in Trieste. He made his La Scala conducting debut in 1960. In 1963, he won the Dimitri Mitropoulos Prize for conductors, which allowed him to work for five months with the New York Philharmonic as an assistant conductor to Bernstein. Abbado made his New York Philharmonic professional conducting debut on 7 April 1963. A 1965 appearance at the RIAS Festival in Berlin led to an invitation from Herbert von Karajan to the Salzburg Festival the following year to work with the Vienna Philharmonic. In 1965, Abbado made his British debut with the Hallé Orchestra, followed in 1966 by his London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) debut.
Abbado taught chamber music for 3 years during the early 1960s in Parma. His early advocacy of contemporary music included conducting the world premiere of Giacomo Manzoni's Atomtod, on 25 March 1965, in Milan.
Conducting career
In 1969, Abbado became principal conductor at La Scala. Subsequently, he became the company's music director in 1972. He took the title of joint artistic director, along with Giorgio Strehler and Carlo Maria Badini, in 1976. During his tenure, he extended the opera season to four months, and focused on giving inexpensive performances for the working class and students. In addition to the standard opera repertoire, he presented contemporary operas, including works of Luigi Dallapiccola and of Luigi Nono, in particular the world premiere of Nono's Al gran sole carico d'amore. In 1976, he brought the La Scala company to the USA for its American debut in Washington D.C. for the American Bicentennial. In 1982, he founded the Filarmonica della Scala for the performance of orchestral repertoire by the house orchestra in concert. Abbado remained affiliated with La Scala until 1986.
On 7 October 1968, Abbado made his debut with the Metropolitan Opera with Don Carlo. He began to work more extensively with the Vienna Philharmonic (VPO) after 1971,which included two engagements as conductor of the orchestra's New Year's Day concert, in 1988 and 1991. He was a recipient of both the Philharmonic Ring and the Golden Nicolai Medal from the Vienna Philharmonic.
He served as Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) from 1975 to 1979 and became its Principal Conductor in 1979, a post he held until 1987 (he was also the LSO's Music Director from 1984 until the end of his principal conductor tenure). From 1982 to 1985, he was principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO). In 1986, Abbado became the Generalmusikdirector (GMD) of the city of Vienna, and in parallel, was music director of the Vienna State Opera from 1986 to 1991. During his tenure as GMD in Vienna, in 1988, he founded the music festival Wien Modern.
Berlin Philharmonic
Abbado first conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in December 1966. After 33 appearances as a guest conductor, in 1989, the Berlin Philharmonic elected him as its chief conductor and artistic director, in succession to Herbert von Karajan. During his Berlin tenure, he oversaw an increased presence in contemporary music in the orchestra's programming. In 1992, he co-founded 'Berlin Encounters', a chamber music festival. In 1994, he became artistic director of the Salzburg Easter Festival. In 1998, he announced his departure from the Berlin Philharmonic after the expiration of his contract in 2002.Prior to his departure, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2000,which led to his cancellation of a number of engagements with the orchestra. Subsequent medical treatment led to the removal of a portion of his digestive system, and he cancelled his conducting activities for 3 months in 2001.
In 2004, Abbado returned to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic for the first time since his departure as chief conductor, for concerts of Mahler's Symphony No. 6 recorded live for commercial release.The resulting CD won Best Orchestral Recording and Record of the Year in Gramophone Magazine's 2006 awards. The Orchestra Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic established the Claudio Abbado Kompositionspreis (Claudio Abbado Composition Prize) in his honour, which has since been awarded in 2006, 2010 and 2014.
Other orchestras and post-Berlin work
In addition to his work with long-established ensembles, Abbado founded a number of new orchestras with younger musicians at their core. These included the European Community Youth Orchestra (later the European Union Youth Orchestra (EUYO)), in 1978, and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester (GMJO; Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra) in (1988). In both instances, musicians from the respective youth orchestras founded spinoff orchestras, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (COE) and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, respectively. Abbado worked with both these ensembles regularly as well, and was artistic advisor to the COE, though he did not hold a formal title with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. In turn, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra formed the core of the newest incarnation of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, which Abbado and Michael Haefliger of the Lucerne Festival established in the early 2000s, and which featured musicians from various orchestras with which Abbado had long-standing artistic relationships. The final new orchestra that Abbado helped to establish was the Orchestra Mozart, of Bologna, Italy, in 2004, and he served as its founding music director until his death.
In addition to his work with the EUYO and the GMJO, Abbado worked with the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar of Venezuela.
Amongst a wide range of Romantic works which he recorded and performed, Abbado had a particular affinity with the music of Gustav Mahler, whose symphonies he recorded several times. Despite this, he never managed to complete a cycle with a single orchestra: in a mix of studio and concert releases, he recorded Symphonies 1-2 and 5-7 in Chicago, Symphonies 2-4, 9 and the Adagio from 10 in Vienna, Symphonies 1 and 3-9 in Berlin, and Symphonies 1-7 and 9 in Lucerne. A planned Eighth in Lucerne (the intended culmination of his traversal of the symphonies there) had to be cancelled owing to his ill health. The symphony was finally performed and recorded in 2016 under Riccardo Chailly as a tribute to Abbado.
He was also noted for his interpretations of modern works by composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Giacomo Manzoni, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, György Ligeti, Giovanni Sollima, Roberto Carnevale, Franco Donatoni and George Benjamin.
Musical style
Abbado tended to speak very little in rehearsal, sometimes using the simple request to orchestras to "Listen".This was a reflection of his own preference for communication as a conductor via physical gesture and the eyes, and his perception that orchestras did not like conductors who spoke a great deal in rehearsal. Clive Gillinson characterised Abbado's style as follows:
"...he basically doesn't say anything in rehearsals, and speaks so quietly, because he's so shy, so people can get bored. But it works because everyone knows the performances are so great. I've never known anybody more compelling. He's the most natural conductor in the world. Some conductors need to verbally articulate what they want through words, but Claudio just shows it, just does it."
In performance, Abbado often conducted from memory,as he himself noted:
"...it is indispensable to know the score perfectly and be familiar with the life, the works and the entire era of the composer. I feel more secure without a score. Communication with the orchestra is easier."
Courtesy: Wikipedia
FranceMusique
28 December 18 10:39
with : Gil Shaham , Jian Wang , Alfred Brendel , Claudio Abbado
Abbado et l'orchestre de Berlin (5/5)
Abbado et l'orchestre de Berlin (5/5) du 28 12 2018 : l'émission de radio replay sur France Musique. Retrouvez les podcasts et les programmes en réécoute gratuite.


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Careers at Nor1
We know we can't do it alone, that's why Nor1 welcomes and searches for the influence and guidance from business and technology's greatest minds. Our Board of Directors are a balanced blend of skill and experience, allowing each member to offer guidance in critical areas of the Nor1 business. It's been that influence that has led to some of the biggest names in capital investment to sit up and take notice of this burgeoning upstart.
Jason Bryant - Nor1 Founder, CEO, and Chairman of the Board
Jason Bryant, Nor1 Founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board oversees day-to-day operations, provides visionary leadership and strategic direction for the upsell technology company.
With Jason at the helm, Nor1 has quickly emerged as the technology leader in upsell solutions. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Nor1 provides innovative revenue enhancement solutions to the hospitality industry.
A seasoned entrepreneur, Jason has over 20 years experience building and leading international software development and operations organizations. Prior to Nor1, he founded and grew DRCI into a world-class offshore software development organization which maintained facilities in India and Mexico. DRCI focused on providing services to the travel industry, specialized in both high-volume transaction systems and Internet technologies.
Jason is a frequent speaker on technology and entrepreneurship at global events such as World Travel Market, the Hospitality Upgrade Vendor Summit, ITB Berlin, and many other industry events. He also volunteers his time to a number of non-profit organizations. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Michigan. Jason currently sits on the board of CYC - Giving Foster Youth A Voice.
John Pasquesi - Managing Director, Otter Capital, LLC; Nor1 Board Member
Mr. Pasquesi serves as Vice Chairman of the Board and Chairman of the Finance and Investment Committee of Arch Capital Group Limited (Nasdaq: ACGL), a Bermuda based insurance and reinsurance company with $4+ billion of shareholders equity and $9+ billion of investment assets. Mr. Pasquesi also serves as Chairman of the Board of AgraQuest, a leading producer of biopesticides and as a director of several other private companies.
Mr. Pasquesi graduated from Dartmouth College (AB degree in Religion 1981) and Stanford Graduate School of Business Administration (MBA degree 1985).
Otter Capital was founded by John Pasquesi to make a variety of private equity investments. Prior to founding Otter Capital, Mr. Pasquesi was a Managing Director and member of the Executive Committee of Hellman & Friedman LLC, a private equity investment firm that has raised and managed over $4.8 billion of committed capital. Prior to joining Hellman & Friedman in 1987, Mr. Pasquesi was associated with Golder, Thoma & Cressey, a Chicago based private equity firm.
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Charlie Sultan - Senior Vice President, Concur Supplier Service, Nor1 Board Member
Mr. Sultan joined Concur in April 2014 as the SVP of Supplier Services, where he leads the team that is responsible for travel content in Concur Travel and managing all relationships with Travel Suppliers.
Previous to joining Concur, Mr. Sultan spent 2 years outside the travel industry as the Chief Operating Officer of Bankrate Insurance and 15 years at American Airlines in 11 different roles. He left American Airlines as Vice President of AAdvantage Partner Marketing, where he was responsible for overseeing AAdvantage's relationships with over 100 partners, including the major Hotel and Car Rental companies, along with Citibank.
Mr. Sultan also ran the Sales Planning & Distribution group at American Airlines and was responsible for creating and managing American's incentive programs for TMCs, evaluating corporate discounts, and reshaping American's Small/Medium Business selling strategy. In addition, he was responsible for directing the activities of American Airlines' $300MM+ Distribution strategy, which included renegotiated agreements with 3 GDSs along with the OTAs and Meta sites.
Mr. Sultan has a Bachelor of Science in Economics degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management.
He currently resides in Denver with his wife and 3 children.
Art Norins - Nor1 Founder and Board Observer
Art Norins serves as a Board Observer for Nor1. Prior to founding Nor1, he also founded Sandium, a B2B commercial heating ventilation and air conditioning system equipment supplier. Art continues his role as Chairman of Sandium. Art is passionate about supporting fellow entrepreneurs; whether that be via angel investment, mentoring/board/advisory board roles or speaking engagements. He serves on the Board of the Indiana Institute of Global Health along with Purdue University's Strategic Alliance Council. Art has traveled extensively (visited over 100 countries spanning six continents) and has lived internationally. He is a patent holder and earned an Engineering degree from Purdue University.
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(1 of ) The sign for the Graton Resort & Casino's hotel casts a shadow near the main entrance, in Rohnert Park, on Wednesday, September 28, 2016. (Christopher Chung/ The Press Democrat)
Hotel occupancy in May climbs in Napa Valley, declines in Sonoma County
NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL
North Bay hotel data
For May, compared with a year before.
• Occupancy: 79.9%, up 3.7%
• Average daily rate: $382.24, up 4.6%
• Revenue: $47.5 million, up 7.2%
• Revenue year to date: $155.9 million, up 5.3%
• Survey size: 5,023 rooms
• Occupancy: 78.2%, down 5.2%
• Revenue year to date: $115.7 million, down 6.9%
• Occupancy: 79.7%, up 2%
• Revenue year to date: $52.6 million, up 4.9%
Source: STR
See past reports on local lodging:
Napa County hotel occupancy rebounded in May, scoring its first month this year in which rates increased over the previous year, according to data released by STR on Friday.
Meanwhile to the west, the average occupancy rates for Sonoma County continued to decline, albeit at the slowest rate so far this year. And occupancies in Marin and Solano counties, as well as revenue, climbed.
A year in which occupancy rates declined took a big swing toward the positive in May, increasing to 79.9%, a 3.7% increase. That was the best for the year so far.
Revenues for May were also up, 7.2% higher than May last year. Napa's hotel industry for the first five months year saw revenues up 5.3%, or $155.9 million.
Average room rates - declining since January  -  showed a slight improvement in May, according to the data. The average rate of $196.82 per night was up 1.8% from a year before. Rates had declined throughout 2019.
Occupancy in May, however, continued the trend lower than a year before, as Sonoma County occupancy rates have moved all this year. Occupancy surged in early 2018 to house survivors of the October 2017 wildfires. The average occupancy last month was 78.2%, down 5.2% from a year before and down year to date by 9.9%.
Hotel revenues for May were up by nearly 5% over the previous May and by 6.4% year to date, at $52.6 million.
Year to date average occupancy rates, as well as those for May, were relatively flat, though trending positive.
With 4,153 rooms included in the survey, Solano County in May remained in the positive for average occupancy rate and revenue.
The latter figure was $10.9 million for May, up 8.1%, and $42.3 million year to date, up 5.4%, the data showed.


Costel on clean sheet
NFFC
Costel Pantilimon was pleased to have kept a clean sheet as Nottingham Forest drew with Preston and feels there is plenty to build on.
The Reds had the better of the game against North End at Deepdale, with Pantilimon also called into action to make a couple of fine stops, but neither side could find the breakthrough.
Speaking after the game, he said: "I tried to be focused every single minute because you never know what can happen in the game. I am happy because I was able to help the team and a clean sheet is very important for the confidence.
"We are proud of the hard work and that was an important thing. We tried to keep our heads up, to keep working and to hope we can get into the play-offs and see what the future will be."
Pantilimon felt that Forest deserved all three points overall yesterday afternoon and is now looking to carry on building some momentum ahead of the East Midlands derby next week.
He said: "I think we could have taken all three points but in the end it was hard work as the pitch wasn't the greatest.
"It is important that we didn't lose these two away games and we can now look forward to the Derby game.
"We are approaching the games in a different way with the new manager and his different ideas and we are all trying to adapt as quickly as possible. I think we are getting there and after a few games we are understanding what the manager wants and we are starting to improve."
Preston North End vs Nottingham Forest on 16 Feb 19


First Novels: Acquiring Minds Martha Woodroof looks at the process of acquiring a first novel from the point of view of publishers who both employ their own taste and then take care of the deal.
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The Night Circus
by Erin Morgenstern
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The first in my series of posts on The First Novel Experience was called "The Romance of Agents." A couple of people wrote me after it was posted and asked if I was going to include in this series any stories of any writers who'd had a bad time with their books. I thought about it and decided no - at least not yet. As someone who's had her share of disappointments in these uncertain and confusing publishing times, it seems more useful - and encouraging - to tell stories of books that are having the kind of success authors dream of.
But I'm open to other thoughts, so feel free to leave them in the comments.
I'm calling this second post in the series "Acquiring Minds." It is, as you might have guessed, about first novels from the acquiring editor's point of view.
As in the series' first post, the novels referred to come from a list sent to me by Elizabeth Khuri Chandler, Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Goodreads.
Publishing is, of course, a business. It has to make money.
If you're a writer and you'd like to read a well-written and engaging real-life publishing business story in which the hero endures ten years of poverty in order to write his first novel, then signs with a relatively unsung agent who then sells the novel for a whopping $665,000, then Keith Gessen's article "The Book On Publishing" is for you. It gives useful insight into novel publication by telling the backstory of Chad Harbach's first novel, The Art of Fielding. You can find Mr. Gessen's article in the October 2011 issue of Vanity Fair, or as a Kindle Single on Amazon (where it's called "Vanity Fair's How A Book Is Born: The Making Of The Art Of Fielding").
There's one sentence in the article that, to me, speaks eloquently to the beating heart of publishing as well as its bottom line. "Publishing houses," Gessen writes, "appear to be giant monoliths. In fact, in the end, they are the sum total of the judgment and taste of their individual editors ..."
Among those editorial tastes are those of Alison Callahan, who was an Executive Editor at Doubleday when she bought Erin Morgenstern's first novel, The Night Circus, a story of magic and young love set in a mysterious circus that arrives in the book's setting one day without warning. And as the title suggests, this mysterious circus is open only at night.
The Night Circus was the first novel ever submitted to Ms. Callahan by Richard Pine, an agent at InkWell Management. He sent it based on intuition, honed by the couple of times Alison had taken him out to lunch to talk books.
So what does Alison Callahan look for in a manuscript? She puts it this way:
The books that I tend to gravitate toward typically have a bit of an edge or a high-concept element of style or tone or storytelling. The best way I can describe my taste is that I like books that go off the beaten path...but you can still see the path. The Night Circus unapologetically plays with time, with actual magic and illusion and love.
Alison began reading the manuscript in her office, but soon decamped to the Random House cafeteria.
With The Night Circus, I knew from those first few chapters that [this] book was unlike any other first novel I had read. My heart started pounding, and every time the phone rang or my email chimed, I was annoyed to be pulled away from the pages, which is why I went to the cafeteria. Once the distractions were gone, I flew through the pages as fast as I could both because I was enthralled by the story, and propelled by the fear that someone else in another office in town was doing the same thing and would beat me to it.
Each publishing house, Alison Callahan says, works differently when it comes to acquiring books.
When I acquired the novel, I was an Executive Editor at Doubleday and no, I was not allowed to buy anything I wanted and I certainly didn't have a blank check. But I am rather reserved when it comes to acquiring novels, so when my boss saw how wild I was about it, we moved in a much quicker way than is typical when attempting to buy a fiction debut. At Doubleday, it is typical to have the publisher [in this case Bill Thomas of Doubleday] read it as well as an editor or two from the paperback division. The reads that came back were unanimously positive.
There was a ton of competition [for The Night Circus], but because we moved very quickly (and very aggressively), we had a jump on some of the other houses. I also spoke with the author at length about how much I was in love with her manuscript and she and I hit it off on the phone instantly. Sometimes, all the pieces line up perfectly.
Okay, that's pretty much that as far as the influence of Alison's Callahan's "judgment and taste." Now, it was on to serious business. Ms. Callahan says everyone at Doubleday knew the book was going to be pricey.
But we also knew that the sales potential was huge. These days, editors must appreciate a debut novel for not only its beautiful writing or creative storyline but also for its marketability and The Night Circus had it in spades. We gave the pages to our foreign rights director to gauge if she thought she could sell it in translation and she came back with a big number which we could incorporate into our profit & loss. She wound up selling it to nearly 30 publishers worldwide.
Publishing is not a business for the faint of heart. It is as subject to the vagaries of consumers as, say, software development or the fashion industry.
Doubleday found out through Mr. Pine that other houses were also pursuing The Night Circus. The book was heading into auction, when Ms. Callahan offered a "pre-empt," a publishing term for an offer from a publishing house that's so good it stops the book from going to auction.
About that looming auction, Ms. Callahan says:
We [Doubleday] didn't want to be in a competitive situation where the money would continue to creep higher and higher. We made a very generous offer, and when the agent said there was one other publisher nipping at our heels, about to make the very same pre-emptive offer, we upped ours substantially. My conversation with Erin is what tipped the scale in our favor.
The day we acquired the book was one of my happiest at Doubleday...followed closely by the afternoon we found out that she was going to debut on the New York Times Bestseller list at Number 2. The whole publication process was, if you'll indulge me, magical.
Okay, so how much did The Night Circus sell for? Nobody at either Doubleday or InkWell Management would talk money specifics  -  at least not to me. But Publisher's Marketplace, the industry's journal of money, reported The Night Circus went for a "major deal."
That means at least half a million dollars.
So, there was Doubleday, willing to stake at least $500,000 on an unpublished author.
Tell the Wolves I'm Home
by Carol Rifka Brunt
Hardcover, 360 pages |
Carol Rifka Brunt
Carol Rifka Brunt's first novel, Tell the Wolves I'm Home, was named one of the best books of the year by The Wall Street Journal, O: The Oprah Magazine, BookPage, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, and School Library Journal. Amazon.com one-sentences the novel's story as: "... a singular portrait of the late-'80s AIDS epidemic's transformation of a girl and her family."
Does that sound like a sure-fire bet to you? Or a gamble?
I asked Dial Press's Jennifer Smith - who championed and edited Wolves - how close book-buying feels to high-stakes gambling?
Her answer:
I'm not a big gambler, to be honest, but I imagine it's much the same. You put your chips down when you love a book, show your cards when you talk to the author and agent, and if it turns out they're not good enough, it can be a crushing blow. But when you win? It's such a great feeling. Even better than gambling, I imagine, because it lasts longer. Winning a book is just the beginning of a long journey to publication. It's the start of something really exciting.
Speaking of excitement, my next post will be about what it's like to sell your first novel from the author's point of view.
Before I finish this post, however, I want to go back for just a moment to InkWell Management's Richard Pine, who, when we talked, insisted on making the point that a lot of publishers' limited resources are dedicated to what he calls "house authors" who have dominated these resources for a long time. It was, he says, a thrilling experience [in the case of The Night Circus] to have a publishing house muster its personnel, dollars, imagination and enthusiasm, in a way that every author - not just every first-time author - dreams of.
I take this as encouragement for all novel writers. Speaking from personal experience, I hit my own soon-to-be published gold with the fourth novel I'd written and hustled. Was it worth it to write three that didn't sell? It was.
Read an excerpt of The Night Circus
Read an excerpt of Tell the Wolves I'm Home
first novels


Della Reese, 'Touched By An Angel' Star And Singer, Dies At 86 : The Two-Way When she was cast as an angel boss on the long-running CBS spiritual drama, Reese had been famous for decades as a gospel-influenced R&B performer, TV guest star and talk show fixture.
Della Reese, 'Touched By An Angel' Star And Singer, Dies At 86
Della Reese, 'Touched By An Angel' Star And Singer, Dies At 86 3:47
November 20, 20176:16 PM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
Merrit Kennedy
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Reese, the actress and gospel-influenced singer who in middle age found her greatest fame as Tess, the wise angel in the long-running television drama Touched by an Angel, has died at age 86. Douglas C. Pizac/AP hide caption
Douglas C. Pizac/AP
Reese, the actress and gospel-influenced singer who in middle age found her greatest fame as Tess, the wise angel in the long-running television drama Touched by an Angel, has died at age 86.
Della Reese, a performer and pastor best known for her starring role on the CBS spiritual drama Touched by an Angel, has died at 86.
"Her signature television role came late in life," NPR's Eric Deggans reported. "Reese already had been famous for decades as a gospel-influenced R&B performer, TV guest star and talk show fixture."
Her husband Franklin Lett released a statement through her Touched by an Angel costar Roma Downey, saying that Reese "has passed away peacefully at her California home surrounded by love."
Downey added, "I know heaven has a brand new angel this day."
Reese, who was born Delloreese Patricia Early in Detroit, started singing in church when she was six. She told NPR in 2003 that she was recruited by gospel legend Mahalia Jackson to tour with her at the age of 12.
"My mother took Mahalia aside and looked into her eyes and said, `I've got a good child here. I wouldn't let her go off with everybody, but I trust you. I know you're a woman of God and I'm expecting you to bring me back a better child than I'm sending away with you,'" Reese told the Tavis Smiley Show.
From there, her songs climbed pop charts, such as "Don't You Know," which is adapted from an aria from the opera La Boheme. As Eric reports:
"Her dignified image led to mainstream stardom. She was on The Ed Sullivan Show 18 times in one year. She also became the first black woman to host her own syndicated variety series and the first black woman to guest host Johnny Carson's Tonight Show.
"It was on the set of that show in 1979 that she suffered a brain aneurysm; a near-death experience that inspired her to become an ordained minister."
Her own show, Della, was on air for one season in 1969-70 with nearly 200 episodes, The New York Times reported, with guests including "George Burns, Ike and Tina Turner, Little Richard, Steve Allen, Tony Bennett, Ethel Waters and Gypsy Rose Lee."
In Touched by an Angel, Reese plays Tess, a sarcastic angel boss who is a maternal figure to Downey's apprentice guardian angel. "No one played the down to earth, worldly mother figure like Della Reese," Eric adds.
The show was a hit, and ran for nine years "telling stories of God's impact in everyday life," Eric says. "People need something to help them with their lives. In the show, we didn't tell you what to do, we said, 'did you ever think about it like this?'" Reese said, as Eric reports.
Reese also sang the show's theme song, "Walk with You."
As an ordained minister, Reese founded a church called the Understanding Principles for Better Living Church out of her living room. The church's website recounts that from an original eight members, the church soon outgrew her living room. As the Times reported, "she delivered Sunday services there for many years."


Daley May Outlast Father As Chicago Mayor The lessons Richard M. Daley learned from his father's missteps during the chaos of the 1968 Democratic Convention helped him claim  -  and hold  -  the seat behind the Chicago mayor's desk where his father served for 21 years.
Daley May Outlast Father As Chicago Mayor
David Schaper
Photo Gallery: Convention Chaos
Richard J. Daley (right) served for 21 years before he died in 1976. His son has held the seat for 19 years. hide caption
NPR Tours Chicago Before The 1996 Democratic Convention
Vietnam War protesters clashed with police on the streets and in the parks of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The violent crackdown on the Chicago demonstrators marred the convention and may have cost the Democrats the election that year.
It also badly damaged the city's image and hurt Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley's career.
Now, Richard M. Daley runs the city and is closing in on his father's record for longevity in the Chicago mayor's office. Some say the younger Daley is the city's most powerful Chicago mayor since his father and, like his dad, he is one of the most powerful mayors in the country.
But in order to sit behind the desk on the fifth floor of Chicago's City Hall where he's served for 19 years, Richard M. Daley had to take a much different path.
Young Activists, Old Guard
The younger Daley has always argued that what happened on the streets of Chicago those steamy nights 40 years ago was not really his father's fault.
In late August 1968, the nation was still reeling from the assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. There was a cultural clash between young activists who wanted the party to be more progressive and inclusive, and the old-guard bosses, like Richard J. Daley, who cut deals behind closed doors and maintained tight, iron-fisted control.
Democrats came to Chicago for the convention as a party deeply divided over the Vietnam War and civil rights.
"There were plenty of warnings for anyone who was listening that there was going to be confrontation in the streets of Chicago," says Bob Crawford, retired political editor of Chicago news radio station WBBM-AM. "The only question was how was it going to be handled and what would the ultimate outcome of it be."
By most accounts, the elder Daley handled the situation poorly.
'Gestapo Tactics'
At the time, Richard J. Daley was the most powerful big city, Democratic machine boss in the country. He was known as a kingmaker after delivering critical votes that helped put John F. Kennedy in the White House. Daley had the president's ear just about any time he wanted, and hosting the convention was his way of flexing his party muscle.
As the city geared up for the convention, he wasn't going to let any long-haired, vulgar demonstrators ruin the party.
"He was the last of the big city bosses," said Ed Burke, alderman of Chicago's 14th Ward since 1969, when he was elected as an ally of Richard J. Daley. "He had a great pride in Chicago. He had a great love for the city. Throw into that a good measure of his Irish temper and you had a volatile mix."
In 1968, Burke was a Chicago police officer assigned to the International Amphitheater for the convention. He was on the floor, just a few feet behind the mayor and his sons when television images of the violent clashes between demonstrators and Chicago's police force were being broadcast. The footage led Sen. Abraham Ribicoff (D-CT), to alter his speech nominating George McGovern for president to denounce what he called "Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago."
"Ribicoff stared down at Daley, looked him in the eye," Burke says. "It was a direct insult to Daley."
The mayor tried to defend himself, his city and his police force.
"The confrontation was not created by the police," he said at the time. "The confrontation was created by the people who charged the police. Gentlemen, get the thing straight once and for all  -  the policeman isn't there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder."
But the sounds and pictures of the events told a different story: Daley's machine overreacted. An inquiry after the convention labeled it a police riot.
"The Democratic Convention of 1968 was a disaster for the city of Chicago. It was a disaster for Richard J. Daley, and it was a disaster for the Democratic Party," says Paul Green, director of the Institute for Politics at Roosevelt University in Chicago, who has co-authored four books on the Daleys. "He was never the same."
'Power Is Everything'
After the dust settled, Daley's influence in the party nationally started to wane.
"The '68 convention left such a bad taste in the mouths of Democrats all across the country that even party regulars were blaming Richard J. Daley for the fate of the party, losing the election in '68," Crawford says.
By 1972, reformers in the party were able to change the rules for selecting delegates to the nominating convention and Daley's delegation to Miami was thrown out.
"But here at home, Mayor Daley was a hero," Crawford says. "Chicagoans thought the way he handled those demonstrations was the way it ought to be handled."
"As a result of the convention in 1968, Richard J. Daley could never be defeated in the city of Chicago," Alderman Burke says. "The people of Chicago admired him for being a strong leader."
Daley easily won re-election in landslides in 1971 and 1975. He maintained firm control over Chicago's City Council, where he never lost a vote and never needed to use his veto  -  lessons his son Richard M. Daley took note of.
During that infamous scene on the floor of the convention hall when Ribicoff criticized the mayor, the younger Daley was screaming back at Ribicoff right alongside his father.
"He saw chaos and he saw his dad lose control," which for a Daley is everything, says Roosevelt University's Paul Green.
"I think he may have learned at that time that power is everything and weakness is nothing," says Crawford.
Mini-Machine And Patronage
While serving in the Illinois Senate, Richard M. Daley felt the sting and betrayal of some city ward bosses who turned their back on him in the power struggles that followed his father's death in 1976.
Although the younger Daley won election as Cook County State's Attorney in 1980, he lost a bid for his dad's old job in 1983 when he challenged Mayor Jane Byrne. The two split the white vote, enabling a new coalition of independent blacks, Latinos and liberals to elect Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington.
With all of the elements of the old machine falling apart, Daley had to start building a new machine all his own.
"He came to the conclusion very early on that he had to change with the times or that he was doomed to failure," says Burke, who was a leader in the anti-Harold Washington block on the City Council in the 1980s and who supported Byrne over Daley in 1983.
"And he made a very conscious effort to avoid the mistakes that older political bosses in Chicago had made," he says.
When Washington died in 1987, his coalition split, creating the opening for Daley in a special election to finish Washington's term in 1989. He pulled together the remaining white ethnic machine bosses, Hispanics and white liberals, including a growing and politically viable gay community, to start a new mini-machine.
"That coalition has never wavered in their support for Richard M. Daley, not once," says Green. "And he's added to that the growing support in the black community [and] the other new communities like the Asian community. You win elections by addition and he has been very good at that."
Daley did not seek to be chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party, a position his father used to control politics and government from the courts to the state capitol to Congress. His father's machine doled out lower level offices, jobs and political favors in exchange for loyalty. The younger Daley's machine rewards loyalty, too, often with jobs and favors  -  his last patronage chief, Robert Sorich, is now in a federal prison after being convicted last year on corruption charges  -  but this Daley keeps a further distance from the inner workings of his machine.
He garnered the support of Chicago's business community, using pinstripe patronage  -  government contracts  -  to amass millions in campaign contributions, making the foot soldiers of the old machine less important. He has also surrounded himself with brilliant young minds, both on politics and urban policies, invested heavily in public works, building new parks, schools, libraries and police and fire stations in the neighborhoods, while at the same time, sparking a new building boom of skyscrapers downtown and along the lakefront.
In order to get done what he wants, this Daley operates just as autocratically as his father.
He has complete control of the City Council, he squashes and sometimes ridicules dissenters, and he leans heavily on the private sector. As a result, the city looks better, city services operate smoothly and Chicago has retained a vibrant middle class.
"There's a lot to be said for the progress of the city. It's important for tax revenues; it's important to make the city livable," says Crawford. "How would I sum up their leadership? Call them great mayors, but remember the price. The price is corruption."
Richard M. Daley is admired by mayors around the country for his innovation in managing cities and coming up with new ways to tackle old urban ills such as failing schools, affordable housing and cleaning up the environment.
His longevity in office, 19 years and counting, has helped him forge important relationships in Washington, where his influence has been helped by his brother Bill, who was Commerce secretary under President Bill Clinton, campaign manager for Al Gore and is now a key adviser to presidential hopeful Barack Obama.
While he may not yet be as powerful nationally as his father was at the height of his reign in Chicago, Daley's stature on the national political scene stands to rival that of his father, should Obama win the White House in November.


Bids to Unlock iPhone Yield Mixed Results AT&T's legal team has discouraged one company's efforts to offer software that would open up Apple's iPhone to services not provided by AT&T. But a 17-year-old has posted instructions on the Web for how to unlock the iPhone  -  using a soldering gun.
Bids to Unlock iPhone Yield Mixed Results
< Bids to Unlock iPhone Yield Mixed Results
August 27, 20076:00 AM ET
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
People who love Skype might like to use it on the most hyped phone in history. The trouble is that the iPhone is linked exclusively to AT&T. You can't use any other companies.
One group announced that it has software that frees the iPhone so you could use other companies, and they were planning to sell that software until they got a 3:00 a.m. phone call from AT&T's legal team over the weekend.
You can, however, still find the instructions that a 17-year-old posted on the Web. He revealed how to unlock the iPhone, provided you are willing to attack your pricy phone with a soldering gun.
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.


As L.A. Probes Sex Abuse Charges, Staff Replaced At Elementary School : The Two-Way Two teachers at Miramonte Elementary School have been arrested on charges related to the alleged sexual abuse of students. Officials say no other staffers at the school are under suspicion, but they want to allay the fears of students and parents.
As L.A. Probes Sex Abuse Charges, Staff Replaced At Elementary School
As L.A. Probes Sex Abuse Charges, Staff Replaced At Elementary School 3:28
< As L.A. Probes Sex Abuse Charges, Staff Replaced At Elementary School
February 7, 20128:00 AM ET
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
And I'm Audie Cornish.
In south Los Angeles, Miramonte Elementary is closed to students today. The school, the district and the community are dealing with a still-unfolding scandal. Two teachers are in jail, accused of sexual abuse and lewd acts involving their students.
And some major changes are coming to the school, as NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates reports.
KAREN GRIGSBY BATES, BYLINE: Miramonte reopens on Thursday, and the brightly painted building will look the same. But, says Superintendent John Deasy, students will be greeted by an entirely new faculty and administration.
DR. JOHN DEASY: And we're talking, in this case, the entirety of the staff. That would be custodian to secretary, to teacher to administrator.
BATES: Drastic measures because of the scandal.
The school is located in Florence Firestone, an often-overlooked part of unincorporated Los Angeles, far away from the affluence of neighborhoods like West L.A. or Beverly Hills. Miramonte's population is almost 100 percent Latino.
Raymond Canal(ph) grew up in this neighborhood. At a recent protest, he says demographics may have everything to do with why nobody has paid attention to Miramonte until now.
RAYMOND CANAL: Where is Gloria Allred at? They touch a white lady's booty in somebody's political office, and Gloria Allred is there already. We got over 30 kids probably got molested, and all that, in here. And we're not doing nothing about it - nothing!
BATES: In fact, civil rights lawyer Gloria Allred might not yet be on the case, but lawsuits have been filed. Lawyer Luis Carrillo said the turmoil at Miramonte is the result of a school system that kept no running record of complaints that have been lodged against 61-year-old John Berndt and 49-year-old Martin Bernard Springer over the years.
LUIS CARRILLO: Year after year, parents were complaining. But the school district failed to monitor the classroom of these teachers, failed to monitor these teachers, and failed to properly supervise the children to protect them from abusive teachers.
BATES: Although there were no recorded complaints against John Berndt, there had been warning signs. The L.A. Times reports a former student saying she and two friends complained to their counselor about Berndt's lascivious behavior in the classroom, but they were told to stop making things up. The Times also said a father complained in 2008 that Berndt had taken inappropriate photos of his daughter.
Carrillo believes these reports won't be the only ones to surface.
CARRILLO: As a result of all these failures, we have all these tragedies. And I predict that we're just looking at the tip of the iceberg.
BATES: At a press conference yesterday evening, Superintendent John Deasy faced an auditorium of angry Miramonte families. Pale and obviously shaken, Deasy told them they were right to be furious.
DEASY: I'm a dad and a teacher, and I can't imagine anything more horrible than the trust that was violated of the students. I try to think about what I would say to my own child, and you struggle for words.
BATES: And, he said, two bad teachers shouldn't taint all the extraordinary ones he's met at Miramonte.
DEASY: I've also walked the campus, and seen astonishing teaching and caring and work inside that school - amazing work.
BATES: But, Deasy said, some hard steps will have to be taken to restore trust, including relocating all previous adults to an unoccupied school. They'll be placed on paid administrative leave until the end of the school year. And, like their students, Miramonte faculty and administrators will also receive psychological counseling, as the scandal is sorted out.
It's a lot of change to restore trust. But parents are already asking, is it enough?
Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR News.


Martin Bóna - Henrieta Žažová
Church of St. Helena in Demandice-Hýbec
The municipality of Hýbec in the Hont county is first mentioned in a document from 1276. The local noble family of Hébeczy originally owned it. The Deméndys, owners of the neighbouring Demandice village, acquired it during the reign of Louis I (1342 - 1382). Hýbec today, is one of the three municipalities of the Demandice village part called Osady.
Above the Hýbec municipality, in a wooded hillock near a functional cemetery (139 metres above sea level) is the concealed Roman-Catholic Church of St. Helena, a solitary one-nave building with polygonal presbytery. The year of the church's construction, in 1023, is engraved on a late-gothic pastoforion (tabernacle). The lawyer and county archivist Lajos Hőke, however, questioned the authenticity of the ANNO D İ 1023 inscription during the middle of the 19th century. The oldest known reliable report on the church in Hýbec comes from as late as February 9, 1526.
After the Battle of Mohács (August 29, 1526) and the seizing of Buda and Esztergom in the 1540s, southern Slovakia became an immediate neighbour with the Ottoman Empire. The Church of St. Helena was abandoned, but it was repaired in the 1720s using the money of local landlord Samuel Blaskovich (around 1680 - 1737). According to István Majer, the Blaskovich family tomb is situated in front of the cross near the Hýbec church.
In modern history Hýbec became a country estate and the church was turned into a chapel, which only held processions on Easter Monday and the day of St. Helena. The map of the first military planning from 1782 - 1784 details the Hýbec church as a ruin (Rudera einen alten Kirche).
At the beginning of the 19th century, local landlord František Simonyi de Simony et Varsany (1761 - 1833) and his wife Mária Bellusi Baross initiated the renovation of the Church of St. Helena. In 1836, Pope Gregory XVI granted the Hýbec church the privilege of indulgences, which could be renewed every seven years. Eventually, the church became a popular pilgrim place on the day of St. Helena (August 18) and birth of the Virgin Mary (September 8).
The exterior of the chapel was renovated in 1882. At the beginning of the 20th century, the church was again in a dismal condition. Despite that, the Hungarian monuments commission refused to allocate money from the state budget for its reparation in 1905. The pilgrimages have been forbidden since 1950 and the church was only used sporadically. Between 2000 and 2007, the Hýbec church underwent a renovation, which also included an architectural-historical and restoration research that brought new information about the building's development.
Eva Borecká
Killy Mansion in Častá
The reconstruction works in Killy Mansion in Častá (Pezinok district) revealed fragments of glass items dating to the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries, Hutterite (Haban) pottery from the 17th and 18th centuries and an early Renaissance wall painting on the house's façade. The archive documents about the house are incomplete and offer little information on its previous owners. The owners of the mansion, who are mentioned in documents, worked for the owners of the Červený Kameň castle. The name Killy Mansion is derived from the Kelio family, who lived there for several generations since the 17th century. According to the land maps, the following owners, the Pálffys, who most probably rented the mansion to tradesmen, are identified from the middle of the 19th century. The property also included a neighbouring house with land.
The current ground plan of the one-storeyed mansion was created in the past by adding a traditional longitudinal house, which contained a black kitchen in the centre, to an older stone building. Other extensions and adjustments added to the plan's overall outline. The buildings were interconnected in the basement as well as aboveground, and covered with a high, steep saddle roof, reminiscent of the so-called German roof. The excavation works in the interior revealed glass fragments, unglazed pottery, pottery with brown and green glazing, Hutterite faience, a golden men's ring with brick-brown semi-precious stone and clay pipe (so-called "štiavnička"). The products can be dated when compared with similar findings from the 16th to 18th centuries. Some items of the Hutterite pottery are marked with a date (the last one from 1760). The findings improve the knowledge of period decorative items as well as items of everyday usage, the level of workmanship and the dining habits of burghers, or landlords living in the town's market square, outside the stone castle walls that offered protection from frequent plundering. The most recent discovery is the fresco on the corner of the Killy Mansion, dated to the beginning of the 16th century, which was hidden, until now under a newer stone wall.
Vladimír Krupa
History of the Piešťany Town Park
The two-century-old Town Park, originally called Spa Park, dominates the spa town of Piešťany in western Slovakia. Piešťany, as we know it today, originated when a town of the same name merged with the Teplice spa (aka Thermae or Small Piešťany). Count George Erdődy (1754 - 1824) bought the town of Piešťany and the Piešťany spa from Emperor Charles III in 1720. The Erdődy family owned the town until 1848 and the spa until 1940, when it was nationalized.
Joseph Erdődy managed the family property from 1789 to 1824. He was the first to initiate arrangements in the park, which he planted in a French style in the area behind the former František (Francis) villa and former spa headquarters. Between these two buildings was the main entrance to the park with a small square, where the Baroque Chapel of St. John of Nepomuk (built in 1760) used to stand. It also had a separate belfry with a single bell. A cemetery developed around the chapel before the last third of the 18th century.
The park arrangements of Joseph Erdődy are captured in detail on the Frauenfeld's plan from 1824. The so-called Manorial House stood at the park's eastern end and faced the house of a spa inspector. This park's area was also called the Old Park at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, when the New Park was planted. Both parks form a united complex today, the Town Park, which is an immovable cultural monument.
A park survey from January 1890 has been preserved, which was probably ordered by Francis Erdődy, the then owner of the spa, before he rented it to Alexander Winter. The survey was done by architect Anthony Pelka and surveyor Hugo Pelka, and captures the most significant buildings, such as the Spa Hotel and its adjacent pavilion, café, Park Villa, Arena summer theatre, inn and the Chapel of St. John of Nepomuk. Between 1893 and 1894, A. Winter ordered the building of a poly functional Spa Saloon at the edge of the park. It was used for organising cultural events (concerts, exhibitions), and as a restaurant, café, wine-room, confectionery, and later, as a casino. Spa guests were accommodated upstairs. A theatre stood nearby, and on the other side were tennis courts and an original music pavilion.
A large planting in another part of today's Town Park took place at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. The so-called Main Alley of the New Park was built, which led from the Spa Saloon to the centre of the park, where a big fountain stands today.
Denis Pongrácz
Painted coffins from Trstená
The beginnings of the parish Church of St. Martin in Trstená are not yet historically clarified. It was probably built at the time, when Trstená acquired the town privileges (1371). The first written reference comes from 1397. After the arrival of the Thurzo family, in the second half of the 16th century, the parish became evangelical. Based on some sources, the evangelists rebuilt the church in the 17th century, while other authors think the church's Baroque reconstruction did not start before 1738.
The canonic visitations mention two crypts in the church. The church interior, however, almost certainly contains other graves as well, because during the construction modifications in the interior in 1996, the workers of the company, which laid the floor heating, found two other stone boards under the side altars. The older crypt could have originated at the end of the Middle Ages (around 1500?). It has a rectangular ground plan of 8.99 and 4.46 m. It contained 88 fully and partly preserved coffins and around 11 coffins that were partially burnt. The coffins were in a bad condition and were literally thrown one over the other, often in 3 - 4 layers. Many body remains were lying outside the cases. The coffins come from the middle of the 18th century to 1837. Members of local noble families of Stankovics, Kruzlics, Stas, Gasparides, Bocko, Koroda de Főlsó, Javorka-Javorek, Hattala, Stefanides and Vilcsek de Podwilk were buried in the crypt, as well as Trstená's prominent inhabitants, such as the notary Wrchovina.
The specific feature of the Trstená coffins, is their painted decoration with floral and votive motifs, often with recording the name and day of death of the deceased one. Also remarkable are the coloured - blue and green - children's coffins. Textiles and footwear, in several cases, have been very well preserved. Most of the coffins come from the period of late Rococo and Empire. Experts selected a set of 27 best preserved coffins to include them on the list of the movable cultural monuments. As an integrated collection of rustic funeral art, they have a great documentational, artistic and ethnological value. Besides, they represent a collection that is unique in the territory of Slovakia.
Katarína Beňová
Rombauer's portrait of Ferdinand V
Painter Johann Rombauer (1782 - 1849), a native of Levoča, who was a globetrotter who lived in Petersburg, decided to settle in Prešov after his return from the Russian metropolis, where he lived until his death. The Šariš Gallery in Prešov, in cooperation with the Slovak National Gallery (SNG), initiated a research project that documented this artist's personality, which culminated in exhibitions of his work in Bratislava (June 4 - August 29, 2010) and Prešov (September 21, 2010 - January 9, 2011), as well as a voluminous catalogue entitled Ján Rombauer (1782 - 1849) Levoča - Petersburg - Prešov. The inter-disciplinary research carried out by experts from Slovakia and Hungary focused on Rombauer not only as a painter, but also as a historic person, whose example enables the documentation of fine art created during the first half of the 19th century in Slovakia.
In a surprisingly short time, after the exhibitions opened, new works of the painter appeared. The restoration works on collection items at Šariš Museum in Bardejov revealed Rombauer's signature on the painting of the Portrait of Monarch Ferdinand V. The museum acquired this work in 1953, but its original locality is unknown.
Johann Rombauer was one of the popular portrait artists living mainly in the Šariš and Spiš regions. Apart from the works ordered by Prešov and Šariš aristocracy, burghers and tradesmen, he also painted for the Prešov administration. The centre of the Šariš See required portraits of the monarch, who could not be present in Hungary in the long term, for representation purposes. Ferdinand V was crowned as the Hungarian king in Bratislava on September 28, 1830. Consequently he also received titles of Austrian emperor (1835), Czech king (1836) and king of Lombardy and Venice (1838). In 1848, he assigned the reign to his nephew Francis Joseph I.
Based on graphic models, Rombauer made two versions of portraits of Ferdinand V. The Šariš See ordered the portrait in 1840 and originally placed it in the See residence. The portrait was discovered in the collection of the Slovak National Museum-Červený Kameň Museum, as the Portrait of Ferdinand V in hussar uniform with the signature Joh. Rombauer Anno 1840 pinxit. The second monarch's portrait has recently been discovered during the restoration works on a painting in the collections of the Šariš Museum in Bardejov, where Rombauer's signature was revealed during the cleaning process. The work was made three years earlier than the painting from Červený Kameň Museum. The monarch wears a brocade, richly embroidered coronation coat, with an unidentifiable country painted in the background. The painting from the Bardejov Museum shows composition parallels with the graphic drawings in the collection of the Hungarian National Museum, where the monarch is situated in an interior with the regalia of power and coronation coat.
Milan Togner
Unknown drawing by J. J. Keller
In several variants of the Baroque transcript in Slovak territory and fine-art literature, the name of Johann Julius Keller is associated with two works created in the first half of the 17th century. As painter Hans Keyller from Lipnik in Moravia, he created a set of coats-of-arms for the Thurzo family, which were ordered by the widow Elisabeth Czobor-Thurzo for the burial of Palatine George Thurzo at the Bytča castle. In the second case, as a painter from Vienna, he decorated the University Church in Trnava. He most probably painted the Trnava church's altar with the theme of St. Stephen's Martyrium, which is situated in the Chapel of St. Martyrs. The chapel's original decoration apparently contained a hitherto unknown Keller's drawing, which was preserved in a collection of old drawings by the Olomouc painter Anthony Martin Lublinsky (1636 - 1690), in a set of drawings adjusted for an original Baroque album. The drawing with the theme of the saint martyrs bears the full signature of Johannes Julij Kelleris delineavit Wienna Ao 1642 and probably entered the Lublinsky collection before 1690.
The hitherto unknown drawing shows only an average, and to a certain extent, basic drawing level, and can thus be considered to be a sketch for the altar painting that has the theme of the saint martyrs in the Trnava University Church, which has by now been the only proof of J. J. Keller's painting activity in the area. Regarding the theme, dating to 1642 and Viennese origin, the drawing could also be a contract sketch for another painting with the presumptive location in the Chapel of Saint Martyrs of the Trnava church. Unfortunately, the painted picture is not known; nevertheless, the composition arrangement of the more or less traditional scheme suggests that in this case we can talk of Keller's own interpretation.
Ivana Fialová
Belveder Hunting Castle in Šaštín-Stráže
Francis I, the husband of Maria Theresa, became the owner of the Holíč and Šaštín estates in western Slovakia in the course of the 1730s and 1740s. As a modern economist, he used these estates for implementing economy theories into practice. He introduced many reforms and innovations, which turned the neglected and indebted properties into effectively functioning economic units. The lands of both estates hosted large hunts each September and the Holíč estate, with its castle, became a favourite summer residence of the imperial family.
Very little, however, is known about the other, no longer existing building of the Belveder Hunting Castle, which served the needs of the Vienna court. It was located in the municipality of Stráže (today part of Šaštín-Stráže), which belonged to the Šaštín estate. It was built before 1736, when the estate was in the hands of the Czobor family. The historical documents from the 18th century mention the castle's existence very sporadically, mainly recording the accounts of its repairs during certain years. However, some of the inventories of the castle's furnishings have been preserved to help create at least a partial picture of its interior. There also are a few records that directly concern Belveder, or the buildings in its vicinity.
The death of Emperor Francis I on the 26th June 1765 significantly influenced the fate of the Belveder Castle. Maria Theresa did not consider it necessary to keep the building any longer and in 1766 sent part of the mobiliari to the Halbturn Castle (Burgenland, Austria) and neighbouring Holíč. The castle and its garden was rented, but later deteriorated and during the first three decades of the 19th century was razed to the ground.
Barbora Matáková Jr.
Laskár - the memory of a country
Laskár lies in the Upper Nitra valley, around 5 km southwest of Prievidza. This, originally an independent village became part of the Nováky town in 1941. Laskár was founded at the end of the 12th century, when it separated from the settlement of Svätý Jakub (Saint Jacob). It is first mentioned in 1355, in connection with aristocrat Ján, the son of Laskár from Svätý Jakub. The document from 1419 records the name of Laskár as Lazkarfalva. The settlement of Svätý Jakub ceased to exist in the first quarter of the 16th century. The village of Laskár was part of the Prievidza castle estate, and yeoman families of Majthényi, Berényi, Erdődy and Tarnóczy. The document from 1546 first mentions the existence of a fortified construction Castellum Lazkar vocatum, which was rebuilt in the Renaissance style at the end of the 16th century. In 1788, the Laskár manor house was enclosed with two walls, between which was a water moat with drawbridge. The Chapel of St. Jacob was part of the fortified manor house. With the Baroque reconstruction in 1799, the manor house lost its appearance of a fortress. An arched bridge was built and a natural-landscape park grew around the manor house. The building was again modified at the end of the 19th century, when the family of Tarnóczy built up a family archive there. Near the manor house were the houses of a pandour, blacksmith and brewer, a manorial bakery, granary, distillery, brewery and smith's forge. A wooden manorial mill and sawmill were also in the village. One tavern stood at the end of the village and two others on the roads to Nováky and Bojnice.
The events of 1918 and 1948 brought radical changes to the life of Laskár, when the manor house met a similar fate, like many others in Slovakia. The noble family was moved out, and the manor house was nationalised by the Ministry of Home Affairs and turned into a military building. The onset of the Laskár's end, however, came in the 1990s, when the Upper Nitra Mines Prievidza purchased the lands of the local people in order to begin an underground exploitation of coal and lignite. The planned undermining of Laskár was also the reason that the manor house was excluded from the Central Register of Cultural Monuments in 1988, where it was registered in 1965. The demolition of the manor house was subject to a construction-historical and archaeological research. The adjacent buildings were demolished in 1997 and garden allotments were created on their sites. The manor house was demolished in the summer of 1999. Today, these places bear noticeable remains of the natural-landscape park - with sycamores, that are almost 200 years old, which were planted during the manor house's Baroque reconstruction. The only place preserving the memory of the municipality is the cemetery in Laskár, which is also unique with its stone grave crosses dating from the end of the 19th century. It is crucial to preserve it in its original place by identifying the cemetery's area as a significant cultural-historical locality in the general ground plan and by defining the conditions of its preservation.
Peter Nagy
Archaeology of the Church of All Saints in Dechtice
The origin of the All Saints Church in Dechtice (Trnava district) can be dated to 1172, based on the record from a canonic visitation that took place in 1782. It is a unique building, which (though it sounds like a nonsense) can be described as a square rotunda. A church with such a ground plan was not to be found anywhere else in Slovakia or the then Hungary. The only similar construction is in the village of Hidegség, on the bank of the Neusiedl Lake in modern day Hungary.
The church is situated above the village, in the middle of a cemetery. It consists of a square-circular nave, which is finished with an elongated semi-circular apse. The Dechtice church has always had a slanted saddle roof, as the preserved gable wall on the eastern side suggests. Today, we can still admire the original entrance on the southern side, with a Romanesque portal, where a stone pointed arch was inserted in the gothic period. A tower with a new entrance from the western side and matroneum, which disarranged the nave's circular ground plan, were added in the Baroque period.
Architecturally significant is the construction material used. Despite the fact, that the locality has plenty of suitable construction stone, the whole church was built from bricks. Brick making in the Middle Ages was financially demanding as well as time consuming; apart from the raw material it also required an experienced brick-maker. The brick material could create a unique decoration; in Dechtice they used layers of bricks, which originally protruded from the profile by several centimetres. These relief elements were removed in the latter years, which made the wall level. Fortunately, the rare wall paintings with the scenes from the life of Christ have been partially preserved in the church interior. It is possible that the white walls still hide rare medieval paintings and that there are other decorations behind the smooth outer façade, which could only be revealed by potential restoration research.
An archaeological research that took place in the All Saints Church in July 2010 revealed the construction of the church foundations and a unique cornice built of two rows of specially shaped bricks. Another unique finding was discovered during an interior probe under the original Romanesque entrance. Three layers of brick floors have been preserved there, of which the lowest one was made using Romanesque bricks, that were identical with the construction material of the church. It is the first medieval discovery of this type of paving in Slovakia.
Zuzana Zvarová - Miroslav Matejka - Tomáš Janura
Fifth Canonry House in Nitra
A chapter in the Roman-Catholic church grouped priests-canons, who followed certain rules - a canon, according to the monastery example. The priests-canons jointly served the holy mass and helped the bishop with the administration of the diocese. The canonic life was different from the monastic one. The canons could own a private property and the canonic houses were separately run households. They were fenced and consisted of the house of a canon and the house of servants. A canon could not sell his house, sign it away or exchange it.
The Upper Town of Nitra was divided between the Nitra's residential chapter and bishopric. The chapter's property could momentarily appear in the hands of the canons, who kept houses - canonries, and had to live and keep the chapter's residency. The number of priests-canons varied; there were probably twelve in the Middle Ages, ten after 1500, twelve in the second half of the 16th century, thirteen in 1629, nine at the end of the 17th century and only six in 1789. Each newly appointed canon was officially assigned a canonry house. The canon usually lived there until his death.
The so-called Fifth Canonry House on the Square of John Paul II, No 2 and 4, in Nitra was researched in 2010. The research confirmed that it had undergone a complicated construction development and what is really important is that the archival-historical sources primarily described this specific canonry house. The house is situated in the centre of the castle hill; in the place of the present access to the Nitra Castle from the north of the Pribina Square. It consists of two buildings: a newer southern building No 2 and older northern building No 4. The two oldest construction phases out of the overall number of 12, which concern the development of No 4, are dated to the 15th and end of the 16th centuries. The building was extended in the 17th century, enlarged to the south in the 18th century and to the west in 1757.
The building No 2 was built in the southern part of the area during the first half of the 19th century. It had two wings, the street one served as a lodging, dooryard and communication place. The most significant construction adjustment was the reconstruction from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and the utility arrangements following the damage to the building caused by the bombing of the castle hill in 1945.
The building of the Baroque canonry house with masonry wall, green area and courtyard, accurately documents the development of architecture specifically in Nitra's Upper Town, as well as, in general terms, across Slovakia.
Peter Buday
Močenok manor house in archive sources
In order to get to know the architecture of the 19th century, one needs to study archive sources. This is also inevitable because there are almost no authentic records regarding the construction development of the representative examples of recent history. Only in exceptional cases - rather by a happy coincidence than an aimed effort - we find monuments that can be explored in almost every detail thanks to their archives. The story of the former bishop's manor house in Močenok is also told as a mosaic of secondary documents, such as official records, correspondence and newspaper coverage.
The former residency of Nitra's bishops in Močenok is unique because not only is it preserved as a monument; it also has completed documentation, mainly concerning the fundamental construction phase of the building in the 1840s. The manor house escaped the tragic fate that most of the Slovak noble residencies met, because the former (Communist) regime gathered priests and nuns (the "enemies" of the state) in there. It has thus survived without significant changes, as a unique example of the classicistic gesamtkunstwerk from around the middle of the 19th century.
The six decades between 1848 and 1911, which mark the completion of the manor house and the transfer of the bishop's office to the renovated castle palace in Nitra, could be seen as a blooming era of the Močenok estate's residence. The building has a symmetrical ground plan in the shape of the letter H and is situated in a large park in the historical centre of the municipality, where the late-Baroque Church of St. Clement also stands.
The manor house was most probably built on the site of an older building, which stood there until the second half of the 18th century, at the latest. The inventories recorded by John Zelenay, the economy director of the bishopric, suggest that it was quite a large, luxuriously furnished residence. Its unusual beauty is described not only in period records, but also in the hitherto unexplored voluminous archive material kept in Ivanka pri Nitre, which contains documents from 1840 to 1848, 1876 and 1900 to 1901. With regards to the documents referring to the interior description of the "summer house", of particular interest, is the exceptional collection of chandeliers, which were probably made in Vienna.
Ľudmila Husovská - Naďa Hrašková - Adriana Reťkovská
The Burgher's house opposite the Kremnica walls
The central-Slovak mining town of Kremnica had not only an urban centre enclosed by walls in the Middle Ages, but also a built-up area along the roads leading to the individual gates of the town fortification. Dolná (Lower) Street, lined on sides by a continuous row of Burgher's houses gradually built from the end of the 14th century, leads to the barbican and the up-to-day preserved Lower Gate.
The storeyed Burgher's house No. 2/67 at the north-western corner of Dolná Street is a national cultural monument. Despite its significance, it has not yet undergone detailed architectural-historical, artistic-historical and archaeological research. The house has been almost continuously repaired since the 1980s. No expert documentation has been done during these interventions, only a geodetic survey of the house in 1980 that served as a preparation for research and consecutive works, which took place in 2007 - 2008.
The development of the house is based on the historical data mainly concerning the urban landscaping in this part of the town, reconstructions following the fires of the town and Dolná Street and town images on vedutas from the 18th century. The researchers also drew on the cadastral map from 1858 and historical cards and photo-documentation from the first half of the 20th century.
The first construction phase dated from before 1599. The basement was the oldest part of the house and determined a two-tract ground-floor house typical for Kremnica inside the fortified part of the town as well as at Dolná Street. The second construction phase concerned the period from after the fire in 1599 to the 17th century, when the house was extended and vaulted by renaissance vaults. The third construction phase dated after 1742 and after other fires in the town. It is clear that the individually standing houses were joined together in the 18th century, creating a corner storeyed house drawn in the veduta from 1742. We assume that the fire in 1716 influenced the reconstruction of the building, when a corner with niche and sculpture of St. Florian, the patron saint of fire-fighters, was built there as a sign of fire protection. The fourth construction phase of the house, which only brought along smaller adjustments, dated from after the fire in 1787 until the first half of the 19th century, or 1858. The fifth construction phase, mainly documented by the precise drawing of the building on the cadastral map, took place from 1858 to the beginning of the 20th century. The house received today's appearance with a drawn-in addition of a garage with workshop and open passage through the gate. The sixth construction phase, dated between 1918 and 2007, mainly recorded negative interventions into the building.
Eva Spaleková
The Holy Sepulchre in the Church of St. George in Spišská Sobota
The regional restoration atelier of Slovakia's Monuments Board in Levoča (ORA) last year restored quite a significant and unique monument in Slovakia - the Holy Sepulchre in the Church of St. George in Spišská Sobota. Following restoration of the late-gothic altar, baroque pulpit, cancellus, oratory parapet and the church's sculptural and painting decorations, this was another progressive step regarding preservation of the mobiliari in this sacral interior which is of both artistic and historical significance.


District 10 Supervisor Concerned About Public Safety
Published on March, 2015 in News by Ben Taylor
Since winning her second term as District 10 Supervisor last November, Malia Cohen has pursued the same policy priority she initially put for-ward four years ago: public safety. She pointed to car break-ins, armed robberies, home invasions, and gun violence as problems that need to be addressed in the district.
"Last year I put in several re-quests. First, I established a request to create a gun violence prevention task force," Cohen said. Cohen drafted legislation - which was unanimously approved - to establish a thirteen member task force, to be appointed by the Board of Su-pervisors Rules Committee. Cohen also requested that the Legislative Analyst conduct an audit of current violence prevention programs in San Francisco.
"This audit has yielded me a few gems. First, it's identified where the resources are being spent. Most of the resources are being spent in the Mission, and in the South-of-Market," Cohen said. The audit also revealed that San Francisco has spent $208 million on violence prevention programs since 2010, yet there were thirteen homicides in the first six weeks of the year, at least nine of which took place in District 10. Co-hen wants adequate police resources allocated to District 10; specifically Bayview and Potrero Hill's Southern Slope, areas which she said are most adversely affected by violence.
Cohen and her staff have been working on evaluating the impacts of Proposition 47, which reduced the classification of most non-serious and non-violent property and drug crimes from a felony to a misdemeanor. Pas-sage of the measure in 2014 allowed hundreds of inmates, being held on charges such as petty theft or pos-session of small amounts of drugs, to be released from state prisons or to appeal their convictions. Critics of the initiative have expressed concern that it could lead to an increase in crime, and a heightened risk to public safety.
"It's going to have an impact on us, and I'm trying to understand ex-actly how," Cohen said. "We need to talk a little bit more about the pros-ecution of these crimes. I'm working with the district attorney's office and getting his commitment and his as-surance that this is a priority for him, that he is not plea bargaining out, not letting established criminals go into community courts, but that they are being punished for the crimes that they have committed."
In response to the onslaught of construction in the district, Cohen said she wants development that matches the neighborhoods' tone and composition. She'd like to discourage developers from proposing projects that are too dense, and is looking for retailers that will complement the community. "One of the things that I hear often is that people would like a pharmacy in the area, a Rite Aid, a Walgreens, or something like that." While there are Walgreens on Potrero Avenue and on Third Street, the desire for more pharmacies has come from individuals across the district, according to Cohen. As chair of the Board of Supervisors Land Use and Economic Development Committee, which oversees legislation related to zoning, planning, and development, Cohen can play a significant role in green-lighting such projects.
On the issue of homelessness, Cohen advocates relaxing the City's rules governing same-sex shelters. One prominent homeless shelter in the district, Providence Baptist Church at 1601 McKinnon Avenue, like the majority of San Francisco's homeless shelters, is gender segregated. "A lot of folks on the street are in couples," Cohen said. "They're hesitant to go into shelters because they don't want to be separated from their husband, or wife, or partner, and they don't want to be separated from their dog if they have one."
According to Cohen, there are legitimate reasons for gender segregated shelters, but she wants at least once space that would allow couples. "That's really been the chal-lenge because our City has a policy where there are very few beds for couples. There are family shelters, and then there are male shelters and female shelters," she said. Cohen isn't working on legislation to relax gender segregation at Providence or any other shelter.
Cohen supports the proposed Navigation Center, to be located at 16th and Mission streets, which would serve as a triage center, offer-ing services to those most in need. It's intended to move homeless people into treatment and housing, or guide them towards other resources. Cohen is working with City agencies to en-courage them to prioritize homeless people from District 10 at the facility.
Cohen said she has no plans to run for another office once she's termed out in four years.
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