20th century fiction
Death has Deep Roots – Michael Gilbert
Victoria Lamartine is on trial for the murder of Major Eric Thoseby. The murder was committed in a small in the Family Hotel in Pearlyman Street, run by Monsieur Sainte, who came to London after the war. Vicky is another French refugee, assisted by the Société de Lorraine, an organisation set up to help French citizens in London, to find work after suffering imprisonment & torture by the Gestapo for her role in the Resistance in the Angers region. Thoseby had been the SOE contact in the area. He knew Vicky & she had been in contact with him after the war, trying to trace Lieutenant Julian Wells, the father of her baby. Vicky gave birth in a prison camp & the baby later died of malnutrition but Vicky didn’t believe the story that Julian had been killed by the Gestapo in the same raid when she was caught. Thoseby was at the hotel that night to meet Vicky & she was discovered standing over his body. The murder weapon, a kitchen knife, has her prints on it & the very efficient method used to stab Thoseby was taught to Resistance fighters during the war.
Nap Rumbold is the junior partner in his father’s firm of solicitors. He is surprised to be contacted by Vicky’s solicitors two days before the trial commences & asked to take on the case. Vicky was dissatisfied with her counsel, who obviously believed her guilty, & she had heard of Nap through Major Thoseby (they were wartime colleagues). Nap agrees to see Vicky & is impressed by her story. The police case is that Major Thoseby was the father of Vicky’s child & that she murdered him when he refused to support her. Nap believes her innocent but realises how difficult it will be to prove her innocence & discover the true murderer. Nap enlists Major Angus McCann, a private investigator, to pursue the London end of the investigation while he goes to France to look into the wartime roots of the relationship between Vicky & Thoseby. The investigation is complicated by the other guests at the hotel, including alcoholic Colonel Alwright & Mrs Gwendolyne Roper, whose evidence seems damning until her own activities are scrutinised.
This is a great combination of courtroom drama & adventure story. The background of the war & the French Resistance is exciting & Nap’s investigations in Angers reveal many secrets that desperate men would kill to keep hidden. The chapters alternate between the trial & Nap’s investigations & this structure works very successfully. I’ve always been a fan of courtroom drama (Witness for the Prosecution is one of my favourite movies) & the sober recounting of evidence contrasts well with the chapters in France as Nap tries to break through the obstructions of people who have many secrets. The wartime background is fascinating as the motives of everyone involved are untangled & the time constraints involved ramp up the tension beautifully. It was a real treat to have the opportunity to read Death has Deep Roots for the 1951 Club.
The 1951 Club has been a wonderful excuse to read & reread some terrific books. There are lots of links to more reviews on Simon’s blog here. As well as the two books I’ve reviewed, I’ve also listened to the audio book of The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, read by Derek Jacobi. This is one of my favourite books & I must have read or listened to it over 20 times. I’ve also reviewed My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier (I’m looking forward to the new movie very much. There’s a trailer here). Other reviews on the blog – The Blessing by Nancy Mitford, Round the Bend by Nevil Shute, There are so many more that I read pre-blog, 1951 must be one of my favourite reading years! One that brought back happy memories when I saw it in the Goodreads list was Désirée by Annemarie Selinko, a romantic novel about Napoleon’s first love. I’ve also read The End of the Affair by Graham Green, They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie, The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham (after seeing the TV series with John Duttine back in the 70s), Ellen Tebbits by Beverly Cleary (a childhood favourite), Night at the Vulcan by Ngaio Marsh, Duplicate Death by Georgette Heyer, A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor, An English Murder by Cyril Hare, The Lute Player by Norah Lofts & Florence Nightingale by Cecil Woodham-Smith. I’d recommend them all, even though I read many of them over 35 years ago. What a great year for publishing!
The Quiet Gentleman – Georgette Heyer
April 11, 2017 April 8, 2017 / preferreading	/ 25 Comments
Gervase Frant, sixth Earl of St Erth, returns to Stanyon, his family home in Lincolnshire, a year after the death of his father & after several years as a soldier on the Continent. The unregarded son of his father’s first, unhappy, marriage, his return is disconcerting for his stepmother, the Dowager Countess, & especially for her son, Martin. Martin has been the spoiled darling of both his parents, treated almost as the heir, & the reappearance of his half-brother is a source of jealousy. The estate has been stewarded by a cousin, Theo Frant, a steady hand who has kept in touch with Gervase. Miss Drusilla Morville, the daughter of a local gentry family, is visiting Stanyon as the guest of the Dowager while her parents are on their travels.
Gervase’s quiet good manners soon recommend him to the Dowager & the rest of the household. All except Martin, whose resentment is plain. When Gervase rescues the beautiful young heiress, Marianne Bolderwood, after she is thrown from her horse, Martin’s jealousy is aroused. Marianne’s easy, flirtatious manners have led Martin to believe that she returns his love although she is too innocent to realise it. When Gervase’s friend Lord Ulverston arrives, the attraction between him & Marianne is obvious to everyone but Martin. He tries to force his attentions on Marianne at a ball at Stanyon by proposing to her & then tries to force Ulverston to fight a duel.
More seriously, Gervase is the victim of several “accidents” which could be something more sinister. Martin forgets to warn his brother of a rickety bridge & a rope pulled deliberately across the road trips his horse. When Gervase is shot while out driving, & Martin disappears, everything seems to be pointing in the direction of a jealous young man with murderous intent. But is this really the answer? Gervase is determined to avoid scandal but can he believe that Martin was not involved?
I love Georgette Heyer. Of course, there’s also romance as well as intrigue in this sparkling story. Drusilla Morville is a quiet, elegant young woman from an intellectual family who has an easy, companionable friendship with the whole family. She’s on the spot when Gervase is thrown from his horse & takes on the burden of nursing him after he’s shot. Her impeccable manners & competence impress Gervase but Drusilla will not allow herself to think of anything but friendship with a rich nobleman, her parents’ landlord to boot, who will surely marry an heiress. Gervase’s initial impression of Drusilla on his first evening at home,
” And who, pray, is that little squab of a female? Was she invited for my entertainment?Don’t tell me she is an heiress! I could not – no, I really could not be expected to pay my addresses to anyone with so little countenance or conversation!”
‘Drusilla! No, no, nothing of that sort!” smiled Theo. “I fancy my aunt thinks she would make a very suitable wife for me!”
“My poor Theo!”
soon changes as they become acquainted & he realises that she has plenty of humour & conversation as well as quiet good sense. She even discusses Mary Wollstonecraft’s life & work with Gervase quite matter of factly which I loved. Drusilla is one of Heyer’s older heroines & much more interesting to me than flighty Marianne Bolderwood with her beauty & her train of suitors. I also adored the Dowager Countess with her Lady Catherine-like pronouncements & her complete self-absorption. The mystery of the attacks on Gervase is absorbing, I loved the descriptions of the estate, the house & the countryside & altogether, this is now one of my favourite Heyer novels. My enjoyment was enhanced by listening to the audio book read by Cornelius Garrett, one of my favourite narrators. I like to listen to an audio book for 15 mins or so before I go to sleep but some nights I was desperately trying to stay awake for just a few minutes more to find out what would happen. I’ve listened to several Heyers on audio & enjoyed them all. I still have Frederica, read by Clifford Norgate in my Audible library but the next one I want to read is Venetia as I want to listen to the Backlisted podcast which you can listen to here or wherever you get your podcasts.
It was a real treat to read The Quiet Gentleman for the 1951 Club. Thanks Simon & Karen for the opportunity to read a book that had been in the tbl (to be listened) list for too long.
One, Two, Buckle my Shoe – Agatha Christie
March 14, 2017 March 13, 2017 / preferreading	/ 12 Comments
Hercule Poirot visits his dentist, Mr Morley, reluctantly. It’s just a check up but he’s apprehensive. The visit goes smoothly, nothing out of the ordinary happens except that as Poirot is leaving, he sees a middle-aged woman arrive at the surgery. As she steps from her taxi, she catches her shoe & the buckle is torn off. Poirot politely picks up the buckle & hands it to her. He is amazed to hear from Chief Inspector Japp that, just hours after Poirot’s visit, Mr Morley has been found shot dead & it appears to be suicide.
Poirot is suspicious. Mr Morley seemed perfectly normal & untroubled & there seems no motive for suicide until one of his patients, Mr Amberiotis, dies suddenly of an overdose of the anaesthetic drug administered by Mr Morley. Was it remorse at making such a terrible mistake that led to the dentist committing suicide? Then, another patient, Miss Sainsbury Seale (she of the buckled shoes), disappears after a visit from Poirot & Japp. Poirot’s investigations will involve everyone who was in Mr Morley’s house that day – Alfred, the page boy who can’t remember anyone’s name correctly; his assistant, Gladys Nevill, who should have been at work that day but was mysteriously called away to visit a sick aunt who is perfectly healthy; Gladys’s unsatisfactory young man, Frank Carter; Howard Raikes, a young American who left the surgery waiting room without keeping his appointment; Mr Morley’s partner, the alcoholic Irishman Reilly; Mr Morley’s sister, Georgina, & her maid, Agnes, in the flat above the surgery; financier Alistair Blunt (whose niece, Jane, is in love with Raikes) & the mysterious Mr Barnes who hints to Poirot about espionage. What could connect this disparate group of people & why was Mr Morley murdered?
This is a classic Christie plot with red herrings galore & some quite subtle misdirection. I had always thought of Christie as quite a bloodless writer (in the sense of not dwelling on the physical details of her corpses) but there’s a very gruesome scene where a decomposing body is found that was startling. There’s also humour in the reaction of people to Poirot & the way he takes advantage of their rudeness or dismissal of him as a “bloody foreigner”.
I haven’t read any Agatha Christie for years. I read all her novels when I was a teenager – like many people, her books were my introduction to detective fiction. There have been a couple of recent blog posts about audio books (on Christine Poulson’s blog & here at Bridget’s blog A New Look Through Old Eyes) the comments have been full of great recommendations. Christine mentioned Hugh Fraser’s narration of the Poirot audio books &, as I always enjoyed his portrayal of Captain Hastings in the David Suchet series, I thought I’d try a Christie again after many years.
I loved it. It was the perfect bedtime audio book & I thought Hugh Fraser did a great job. I especially liked his Inspector Japp, he did an excellent imitation of Philip Jackson who played Japp in the series. His Poirot was very subtle, the accent not too overpowering. I’ve put some more Christies into my Audible wishlist. I know that her golden period is considered to be the 1930s-1950s & I’ve avoided any where I can remember the solutions. I’ve chosen After the Funeral, The Hollow, Taken at the Flood, Dumb Witness, The ABC Murders & Hickory Dickory Dock. Any other classic Christies I should try? I’ve just checked my Poirot DVDs & I have the Suchet version of One, Two, Buckle my Shoe so I may have to have a look & see if they made any major changes to the plot. Lovely way to spend the afternoon. By the way, does anyone have a favourite narrator for the Miss Marple books? I see that most of them are read by Joan Hickson or Stephanie Cole, both of whom I imagine would be perfect. I’ve just listened to Stephanie Cole reading the sample of Sleeping Murder & she has Gwenda’s New Zealand accent just right so that’s a good sign. Then, there’s The Moving Finger read by Richard E Grant, another favourite voice.
The Uninvited – Dorothy Macardle
January 26, 2017 / preferreading	/ 11 Comments
Roddy Fitzgerald is a writer & critic, living in London with his sister, Pamela, who has been nursing their father & is mentally & physically worn out. The Fitzgeralds are tired of London life & are on the lookout for a place in the country. On a road trip, they discover Cliff End, a remote, slightly dilapidated but beautiful Georgian house on the coast in Devon. Pamela falls in love immediately & can see the possibilities while Roddy doesn’t think they can afford to buy it. Surprisingly, the owner, Commander Brooke, agrees to sell it for a nominal price, leaving the Fitzgeralds to pay for renovations. The Commander, a gruff man, seems uneasy about the house but says little about its history. He lives with his orphaned granddaughter, Stella, who has led a sheltered life at boarding school. Stella lived at Cliff End as a young child until the tragic death of her mother, Mary, who fell from the cliff. Her father, the artist Llewellyn Meredith, left England & the Commander cared for Stella with the help of Mary’s friend, Miss Holloway. Mary’s death combined with the scandal of Meredith’s relationship with his Spanish model, Carmel, may account for the Commander’s dislike of the house but local rumour whispers of the house being haunted.
Pamela begins the renovations with local help & Roddy winds up their London life. He plans to write a book but soon begins a play. Lizzie Flynn, the Fitzgerald’s Irish housekeeper, completes the household. Lizzie soon picks up the local gossip & her cat, Whiskey, refuses to go upstairs. Stella is fascinated with the house & the Fitzgeralds are keen to invite her but her grandfather refuses absolutely, without reason, to allow the friendship to develop. Stella does visit the house & the manifestations seem to be stimulated by her presence. Stella’s reveres the mother she can barely remember but the spirit in the house seems to be both loving & vengeful. Is it trying to protect Stella or harm her? However much Roddy & Pamela love the house, there’s an unpleasant atmosphere in some of the rooms. Sobbing in the night & patches of intense cold lead to more frightening manifestations.
My hand groped, trembling, for the light switch; I turned it on and ran bare-foot downstairs. everything was as we had left it: a white cloth, thrown over the laden table, made it like a bier; the nursery was empty, the curtains closed; face powder strewed the dressing table; the scent of mimosa lingered, potent still.
I leaned against the wall, waiting for my heart to recover its natural beat, but a cold shivering had taken me and I longed for my own room. I turned the lights out and tried to go upstairs.
I could not do it; I trembled at the knees and shuddered convulsively, sick with the chill that seemed to shrink the flesh on my bones and wrinkle my skin.My breast was hollow and a breath blew over my heart. If I had not clung to the newel-post, fighting, I would have panicked; I would have shouted for Max or pulled the front door open and torn out of the house. I thought something was coming down the stairs.
The Uninvited is a genuinely creepy tale of ghosts & the influence that the past can have on the present. The familiar tropes of the ghost story – the remote, abandoned house, the noises in the night, patches of unexplained cold, the cat who refuses to go into certain rooms – are there but very much grounded in a domestic story of renovating a house, making a home. Roddy’s growing love for Stella is protective but his desire to rescue her from whatever is haunting the house is combined with a recognition that she is her own person. She has been stifled by her grandfather & by the image of the saintly Mary, encouraged by the sinister Miss Holloway (whose obsession with Mary reminded me of Mrs Danvers) as well as the locals. The Commander’s desire to root out any influence from Stella’s artistic, immoral father is almost pathological.
“She is her father’s daughter. She remembers him; that is the trouble. … She resembles him physically. The influence of that strain in her is so potent that it has been my life’s aim to break it down. God knows, I’ve left nothing undone! When Mary died I retired from the navy and dedicated myself to that purpose – to make Mary’s child the woman Mary would have wished her to be. I paid an exorbitant salary to Mary’s confidential nurse; I surrounded Stella with Mary’s pictures, gave her Mary’s books, sent her to the same school. It was a sacrifice: I missed her. But when she returned home a year ago I was pleased. She would always be without her mother’s grace, charm, beauty, but she was good. She was serious; she carried out her duties conscientiously; she continued her studies under my direction. I planned to take her abroad.”
To combat this stifling atmosphere becomes the goal of both Roddy & Pamela. In the course of this struggle for Stella’s future happiness, they are fighting not only her stubborn grandfather but also the uninvited inhabitants of Cliff End. Their determination to win through & release Stella from the ties of the past leads to a truly exciting climax.
The Uninvited was made into what is considered one of the best supernatural movies ever made, one of the first to treat ghosts seriously & not just as comic relief. Starring Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, Donald Crisp (one of my favourite character actors) & Gail Russell as Stella, it has a screenplay by Dodie Smith (of I Capture the Castle & Look Back with Love fame). I watched the movie first & it was very close to the book. The friends who visit the Fitzgeralds, Roddy’s play writing & most of the locals are left out but that just heightens the solitary atmosphere of the house & the supernatural manifestations. The Irishness is also almost completely removed. Macardle was an Irish writer, very active in the Republican movement, & much is made of the Irishness of the Fitzgeralds in the book. Lizzie’s Catholicism is very potent & more than just peasant superstition (which it tends to be in the movie) & the local priest, Father Anson, has a greater role.
The lovely new edition I read is part of Irish publisher Tramp Press‘s Recovered Voices series (I reviewed the first of the series, A Struggle for Fame by Charlotte Riddell, a couple of years ago). It’s a beautifully produced book with French flaps & an informative introduction by Luke Gibbons.
Because of the Lockwoods – Dorothy Whipple
January 10, 2017 January 9, 2017 / preferreading	/ 11 Comments
Harriet Evans, in her Preface to this edition of Because of the Lockwoods, writes of the “readability factor” in Dorothy Whipple’s work & speculates that she is not better known & valued as a novelist because her books are just so satisfying to read that critics think she can’t be writing “real literature“. Well, I can testify to the unputdownability of her work. It was a very hot day last Saturday & I sat down at about 11am with a glass of iced tea & Because of the Lockwoods . I was at about p130 & I finished the book that evening. Apart from necessary breaks for more iced tea, lunch & opening the door to the cats & trying to convince them that they should stay inside, I read over 300pp in a day. I can’t remember the last time I did that. I kept planning to stop but then “I’ll read just one more chapter. I must find out how Thea gets on at the Pensionnat or whether Martin will accept the dress clothes from Mr Lockwood or will Oliver’s plans for Molly work out?”. In the end I just forgot about the heat & anything else I should have been doing & raced on to the end of a very satisfying novel.
The Hunters & the Lockwoods are neighbours. Richard Hunter’s early death leaves his widow at a loss, emotionally & financially, & she eagerly clutches at the idea that William Lockwood will step in & help her with her finances even though he does this with a very bad grace. Money is going to be tight & Mrs Hunter has three children to bring up so they must sell their house on the pleasant outskirts of Aldworth, a Northern manufacturing town. The house they buy in Byron Place is cramped & inconvenient. The neighbourhood is not what the Hunters have been used to & Mrs Hunter struggles on, trying to make ends meet, keeping her distance from the neighbours. The Hunters are patronised by the Lockwoods, expected to be grateful for invitations to Christmas parties. Mrs Hunter is an ineffectual woman, pathetically grateful for Mrs Lockwood’s cast-off clothing & completely unable to reassess her circumstances & pull herself out of the slump she went into at her husband’s death.
Molly & Martin Hunter are forced to leave school early. Mrs Lockwood finds work for Molly as a governess & Martin, who longs to be a doctor, ends up as a bank clerk. Neither are suited for these jobs but they seem unable to change their circumstances. Thea, the youngest of the Hunter children is a different proposition altogether. Thea resents the Lockwoods & their unwilling patronage. She endured humiliating visits to Mr Lockwood’s office as a child, watched his contemptuous dismissal of her mother & suffered through the torments of social occasions with the monstrously self-satisfied twins Bea & Muriel Lockwood. She manages to stay on at school, convinces her mother to allow her to go to France as an au pair for a year (unfortunately to the same pensionnat as the Lockwoods) &, when that ends disastrously, is the catalyst for the turn around in the family fortunes that comes after much heartache & misery.
Her mother, Molly and Martin wrote every week, mostly to say they really had no news. Their letters seemed to be both wistful and flat. Now that she was at a distance from her family, with only their letters to represent them, she noticed a factor common to all three: a lack of interest in what they were doing, in the way they had to spend their lives. Her mother wasn’t interested in housework, Molly wasn’t interested in governessing, Martin wasn’t interested in the bank. Thea was shocked to make this discovery. Not only was it a waste of life, but she wondered, too, if it was a fault inherent in the family. With anxiety, she examined herself to see if it was in her as well. But though she had to admit to frequent dissatisfaction, resentment, indignation, she didn’t think she could be accused of lack of interest.
Thea is the life force in the Hunter family but it’s Oliver Reade who really makes change a reality through sheer energy & will. When the Reades move into Byron Place they see it as a step up from Gas Street where they had lived in poverty. Oliver’s hard work has taken his mother & sister to a respectable home. The difference in the two families is as simple as their attitude to Byron Place. For the Hunters, it’s a humiliating drop in social status & Mrs Hunter’s pretensions to gentility prevent her from becoming part of the neighbourhood. She’s lonely & her children are unhappy in their uncongenial jobs. For the Reades, it’s an upward move. Oliver pursues Thea & is undeterred by her cold indifference. His attempts to become friends are rejected but he gradually becomes a friend of the family, helping Molly & Martin to eventually break free of the inertia they seem unable to overcome. His attempts to better himself, attending night school & taking elocution lessons are endearing rather than comic & his steadfast love for Thea is very touching. Oliver is successful despite his origins & the Hunter’s superior social class is no help to them without the money to keep up the lifestyle they once had. Eventually Oliver is the catalyst for the tremendous & very satisfying conclusion to the novel when the Lockwoods & the Hunters get their just desserts.
I loved everything about this book. The first sentences set the tone for the relationship between the two families. “Mrs Lockwood decided to invite Mrs Hunter and her children to Oakfield for New Year’s Eve. It would be one way of getting the food eaten up. There was always so much of it during Christmas week, thought Mrs Lockwood with a sense of repletion.” Mrs Lockwood is skewered in those few sentences – her condescension, her canny thrift, her self-satisfaction in her own charity. Who are these Hunters who are to be condescended to? Immediately the reader wants to know & the New Year’s Eve party is so awful that we can’t wait to discover how the Hunters (whose side we’re immediately on) found themselves in such a position. We know from the beginning that Mr Lockwood has indulged in a shady bit of subterfuge to get hold of a paddock adjoining the Hunter’s house that he has always coveted. Part of the reason why we race through the novel is to see just how that dishonesty will be revealed & in what circumstances. Along the way though, we lose sight of it because we’re so involved in Thea’s romance with a young man in Villeneuve, a provincial French town where manners haven’t changed since the 19th century; Martin being taken up by the Lockwoods as a presentable young man to squire the girls around & then secretly falling in love with the youngest daughter, Clare; Molly blossoming when she finds work that suits her; Angela Harvey, a friend of the Lockwoods, defying convention by planning a career on the stage.
Thank goodness Persephone Books have reprinted nearly all Whipple’s novels & short stories. The rediscovery of Dorothy Whipple is emblematic of everything that Nicola Beauman has tried to do since Persephone was founded in 1999. Whipple’s Someone at a Distance was one of the first three Persephones & I can still remember the sheer joy I felt when I realised that there were authors like Whipple, Susan Glaspell, Dorothy Canfield Fisher & Marghanita Laski that I had never heard of but could now read. The beauty of the books as objects just added to my excitement. Harriet Evans’ Preface to this edition of Because of the Lockwoods is a passionate rallying cry for Dorothy Whipple & her place in 20th century fiction. Evans wants Whipple to be up there with Barbara Pym & Georgette Heyer as rediscovered & reclaimed authors now taken seriously by critics as well as fans. The same Preface could be written for all the authors I mentioned above & many others who have been reprinted by Persephone to the delight of lovers of absorbing novels, short stories, memoirs & diaries. I’m so pleased that this was the first book I finished this year. It’s a wonderful start to my year of reading from my tbr shelves & getting back to the books, the authors & the imprints that I’ve neglected over the past few years.
The Poisoned Chocolates Case – Anthony Berkeley
January 5, 2017 January 2, 2017 / preferreading	/ 10 Comments
At a meeting of the Crimes Circle, convenor Roger Sheringham has a surprise for his fellow club members. He has invited Chief Inspector Moresby to outline the circumstances of an unsolved murder to the Circle with the idea that the members of the Circle do some investigating of their own. Scotland Yard have run out of ideas & are left with the unsatisfying theory that the murder was committed by a lunatic. Sheringham believes that, with the facts laid out as known by the police, the solution can be found & who better to put their minds to the task than the members of the Crimes Circle, six people who have passed the stringent conditions of membership.
Joan Bendix has been poisoned by liqueur chocolates laced with benzadrine, handed to her by her husband, Graham, who also fell ill after eating some of the sweets. However, it seems that Joan was not the intended victim. Graham had been given the chocolates at his club by Sir Eustace Pennefather. The box arrived in the post as a publicity stunt & Sir Eustace had been only too pleased to hand them on to Bendix who needed a box of chocolates for his wife in settlement of a bet they had made at the theatre the previous night. Sir Eustace is an unpleasant man with many enemies & it seems that Joan has been the victim of a tragic accident. The police have followed up the clues – the chocolates; the letter, written on the letterhead of the Mason’s, the confectioners; the wrapping paper – but every lead has become a dead end.
The members of the Circle – novelists Sheringham, Morton Harrogate Bradley & Alicia Dammers, QC Sir Charles Wildman, playwright Mrs Fielder-Flemming & Mr Ambrose Chitterick – take up the investigation with varying degrees of enthusiasm & confidence. Several of the group know the Bendixs & Sir Eustace. They sympathise with the Bendixs who seemed to be a very happy, prosperous couple. On the other hand, Sir Eustace was widely disliked, particularly for his predatory relationships with women. His wife was in the process of divorcing him & the circle of potential suspects for his murder would have been wide. The Circle have a week to formulate their theories & then they will reconvene to outline them & do their best to convince their fellows & Scotland Yard that they have cracked the case.
This is an immensely enjoyable & inventive story, rightly called one of the standout novels of the Golden Age of detective fiction. It began life as a short story & I may have read that at some stage as one of the theories sounded very familiar to me. Then again, it became such a famous book that I could have read another mystery using one of these ideas. Berkeley was certainly profligate with his ideas to use so many terrific plots in just one book because all the theories, as I was reading them, sounded more or less convincing. Even the outlining of the case so many times as each theory is explained didn’t pall because each person came to the case from a different angle & with such a range of motives from jealousy to gain to a lust for killing. The range of accused murderers also held some surprises with a final, satisfying twist as the murderer is revealed. I also enjoyed reading about the real-life cases that each member uses to reinforce his or her idea. This book really is a master class in writing sparkling fiction with humour & ingenuity.
This edition of The Poisoned Chocolates Case, reprinted as part of the immensely successful British Library Crime Classics series, also includes two additional solutions to the mystery. In the 1970s, Christianna Brand (best known for Green for Danger, one of my favourite mystery novels) wrote a new solution for a US edition of the novel. This is reprinted here for the first time along with yet another solution by Martin Edwards, consultant for the series & author of The Golden Age of Murder. Anthony Berkeley, who also published as Francis Iles, is probably the least well-known of the great Golden Age writers. He was a complicated man & Martin’s book is invaluable reading if you want to know more about him. Interestingly he had the idea for the Detection Club, a dining club for mystery writers that survives to this day, based on the Crimes Circle in this novel.
If you’re a fan of Golden Age mysteries, & haven’t yet read The Poisoned Chocolates Case, you’ve missed out on a treat. On a purely aesthetic level, the British Library have produced an attractive book with beautiful cover art based on a travel poster of the day. No wonder the Golden Age is popular again.


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Los Angeles is known by many names such as the City of Angels and La La Land to name a few, and it is the country’s second most populous city. L.A.’s eclectic range of city-living, natural wonders, sprawling film industry and surfer-friendly beaches attract a diverse population of over 10 million Angelenos.
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The Los Angeles Unified School District is California’s largest public school district and the second largest in the country, serving over 735,000 students and 26,000 teachers. Some of the district’s top public schools include Troy High School, Northwood High School, University High School and Oxford Academy. Charter schools are another popular option in L.A. county, with top schools such as Granada Hills Charter, High Tech Los Angeles, Palisades Charter High, New West Charter and Da Vinci Science. L.A.’s private schools are among the most exclusive in the country and offer the best chances of securing elite college admissions with schools such as The Archer School for Girls, Brentwood School, Carlthorp School, Harvard-Westlake School and Geffen Academy at UCLA.
The University of California, Los Angeles (known by most as UCLA), is one of California’s largest and most well-known public universities. Other top California universities in the area are University of Southern California (USC), Loyola Marymount University and California State University. California schools - especially universities in the L.A. area - have competitive admissions and require high test scores on the CAP, SAT and ACT. Attending your desired Los Angeles university or high school can be tough without excellent grades, test scores and well-rounded experiences. Tutoring can make all the difference in attending the school of your choice and helping students stand out during the admissions process.
L.A.’s future moguls begin their journey with well-rounded experiences and by spending quality time expanding and engaging their interests. With the area’s rich culture, history, gorgeous beaches and major tourist attractions, Los Angeles County has a wealth of opportunities for growing minds.
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What a difference straight teeth can make! A great-looking smile can boost your self-confidence and have a positive impact on social and professional opportunities. Orthodontic treatment is the original smile makeover tool — and you will be happy to know that you're never too old to take advantage of it. But it isn't all about looks: Properly aligned teeth help you to bite, chew and even speak more effectively. They are also easier to clean, which helps keep your mouth free of tooth decay and gum disease.
The amazing thing about orthodontics is that it harnesses the body's natural ability to remodel its own tissue. With the application of light, constant force, orthodontic appliances gently reshape bone and move teeth into better positions. Some examples of these appliances are traditional metal braces, inconspicuous clear or tooth-colored braces, and clear aligners, a relatively new option for adults and teens.
Bite Problems and How to Fix Them
Orthodontic treatment can resolve a number of bite problems, which often become evident by around age 7. These include underbite, crossbite or excessive overbite, where upper and lower teeth don't close in the proper position; open bite, where a space remains between top and bottom teeth when the jaws are closed; and crowding or excessive spacing, where teeth are spaced too close together or too far apart.
To correct bite problems, teeth need to be moved — but doing that isn't as hard as you might think! Teeth aren't fixed rigidly in their supporting bone; instead, they're held in place by a hammock-like structure called the periodontal ligament, which is very responsive to forces placed on the teeth. Orthodontic appliances move teeth by careful application of light, constant pressure. This force can be applied via metal wires that run through small brackets attached to the teeth (braces), or via the semi-rigid plastic of clear aligners.
Orthodontics is for Children — and Adults
Having orthodontic treatment in childhood is ideal in order to take advantage of a youngster's natural growth processes to help move the teeth into proper alignment. Like the rest of the body, the teeth and jaws are now changing rapidly. So at this time it's possible (for example) to create more room for teeth in a crowded mouth by using a “palatal expander” to rapidly widen the upper jaw. This phase of growth modification can shorten overall treatment time and ensure the best result if additional orthodontic appliances are needed.
But remember, healthy teeth can be moved at any age, so you've never “missed the boat” for orthodontic treatment. In fact, about one in five of today's orthodontic patients is an adult. Several new technological developments — including tooth-colored ceramic braces, clear aligners and invisible lingual braces — have made orthodontic appliances less evident, and enhanced the treatment experience for grown-ups. Before treatment, adults are carefully examined for signs of periodontal (gum) disease, which will be brought under control before treatment begins.
Types of Orthodontic Appliances
When you imagine someone wearing braces, you probably picture small metal brackets bonded to the front of the teeth, with a thin wire running through them. This time-tested style remains very popular — but it's no longer the only option. Clear braces use brackets made of ceramic or plastic which, except for the slim archwire, are hardly visible. Lingual braces are just like traditional metal braces — except they're bonded to the back of your teeth (the tongue side) so that no one can see them.
Removable clear aligners are an alternative to fixed orthodontic appliances. They consist of a series of clear plastic “trays” that fit over your teeth exactly; each one moves your teeth a little bit, until they are in the proper position. Whether fixed or removable, each type of appliance may have advantages or disadvantages in particular situations. After a complete examination, the best treatment options for you will be discussed.
Retention & Post Orthodontic Care
Once your orthodontic treatment is completed, it's extremely important to wear a retainer as directed. That's because teeth naturally tend to drift back to their original locations — which is the last thing you want after you've gone to the trouble of straightening them! Wearing a retainer holds your teeth in their new position long enough for new bone and ligament to re-form around them, and helps keep your gorgeous new smile looking good for a lifetime.


Home Biography Elizabeth Vargas
Elizabeth Vargas Biography
Updated On 27 May, 2015 Published On 27 May, 2015
Facts of Elizabeth Vargas
Elizabeth Anne Vargas
Paterson, New Jersey
3 million dollar
Marc Cohn (m. 2002)
ALMA Award for Outstanding Host in a National Information Program
20/20 Since 1978
Relationship short Statistics of Elizabeth Vargas
What is Elizabeth Vargas marital status ? ( married,single, in relation or divorce):
How many children does Elizabeth Vargas have ? (name):
Is Elizabeth Vargas having any relationship affair ?:
Is Elizabeth Vargas Lesbian ?
An American television journalist currently working at ABC channel and is an anchor of news magazine 20/20. Previously, she was an anchor of World News Tonight. She is a daughter of Rafael "Ralf" Vargas and Anne Vargas. She has graduated with bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. She debuted as reporter/anchor for NBC affiliate KOMU-TV. She instantly rose into fame after she became weekend anchor of World News Tonight. She became the first woman to anchor in a network evening newscast in the U.S.
There was once a rumor that she went to rehab for alcoholism for two months. About her personal life, she is already married to her lover whom she dated for three years. After more than a decade of their marriage, they filed for divorce. It is said that her alcoholic behavior was the reason behind their breakup. She had two step children from her husband's first marriage. She has two children of her own from him.
Elizabeth Vargas Affairs
First Affair with Michael Douglas
He is professionally an actor. They were romantically linked until he started to date another girl named Maureen Dowd.
Second Affair with Tico Torres
They were reported to be dating when he broke up with his former lover. But the relationship didn't last long.
Elizabeth Vargas Married
First Marriage with Marc Cohn
Married date: July, 20, 2002 Divorce
Occupationally, he is a singer-songwriter. They came to know each other from their common friend named Andre Agassi at the 1999 U.S. Open. After dating for some time, they got married. However, their relation did not last long which is suspected to be because of her alcoholism.
Elizabeth Vargas Children
SON : Zachary Raphael
Father: Marc Cohn
He is very cute and adorable boy.When he was born he weighed 7 lbs. 13 oz.
SON : Samuel Wyatt Cohn
He is the youngest child of the family. When he was born he weighed 7 lbs, 9 oz.


IIHS Homepage
Urban Lens 2018
About IIHS
On Practice
No Ângulo das Ruas (Around Corners)
Ines Alves
Lourenço Marques and Maputo, two cities separated by time, that occupied the same space. But the dimensions of one get mixed up with the past events of the other. It’s been 41 years since João, a Portuguese man, the father of the director, left Mozambique. This was one year after the country became independent from Portugal.
In this film the director travels to Maputo, the capital, former Lourenço Marques, for the first time, bringing her father’s memories and the desire to meet the people that live in this post-colonial city today.
Director’s Bio
Inês was born in Portugal (1987). She holds an international Master’s degree in Cultural Narratives and a second Master in Documentary Film from University of the Arts London (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Scholarship). Inês has been involved in several artistic, cultural and pedagogic projects. She is a member of Gato Aleatório Colective based in Lisbon, with whom she organizes MOVIMENTO: laboratory and exhibition of collaborative cinema.
Run Time 30 mins
Language Portuguese
Country Mozambique
Year of Production 2018
Life in Gray Ek Inquilab Aur Aaya
Anica Mann-Kapur
Anica Mann-Kapur is a consultant with Tata Trusts and the India Country Team Lead for Global Xplorer. She was a 2017 YES Global Institute Fellow, and as a cultural practitioner who engages in antiquities through art history, she was also an Art Advisor for Delhi Art Gallery in 2016. In addition to writing extensively about arts and culture, she was a research associate at Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities as well as a researcher at Kyoto University.
Parmesh Shahani
Parmesh Shahani is the head of the award winning Godrej India Culture Lab, and the author of the book Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India (Sage Publications, 2008). He is a TED Senior Fellow, a Yale World Fellow, and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.
Jasmine Lovely George
Jasmine Lovely George is a Tedx speaker, lawyer, and a sexual and reproductive health advocate from India. She has founded Hidden Pockets, a community interest startup working on access to sexual and reproductive health in cities. She is passionate about changing technology spaces and making them more inclusive for people of all genders. She is also the member of RESURJ – a transnational feminist collective.
Aromar Revi
Aromar Revi is the founding Director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, a global expert on Sustainable Development; and Co-Chair of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, from where he helped lead a successful campaign for an urban Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 11) as part of the UN’s 2030 development agenda. He is also member of the Managing Board of Cities Alliance the global partnership for sustainable cities and urban poverty reduction and UNISDR’ Global Assessment of Risk. Aromar is one of the world’s leading experts on global environmental change, especially climate change. He is a Coordinating Lead Author of the 2018 IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C that assesses the feasibility of mitigation and adaptation options and defines potential implementation pathways and investment needs to implement the Paris Climate Agreement.
Sudharak Olwe
Sudharak Olwe has been a Mumbai based photojournalist since 1988 and has worked as a press photographer with some of the leading newspapers in India. His photography captures resilience, courage and change in both rural and urban communities across the country. His work has been exhibited in Mumbai, Delhi, Malmo (Sweden), Lisbon, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Washington and Dhaka. Apart from photographs, Olwe has also received the Padma Shri in 2016 for his documentaries on maternal and child mortality. Currently, he is the Photo Editor for the country’s most widely read Marathi newspaper, Lokmat. (http://www.sudharakolwe.com/)
Rajula Shah
Rajula Shah is a Visual artist, Poet and Filmmaker. After dropping out from the Fine Arts faculty Baroda, and completing a Masters in English Literature, she studied filmmaking at FTII, Pune specializing in Film Direction. Her work is located in the interstice of Poetry, Cinema and Anthropology. A keen interest in the indigenous knowledge systems, its practitioners and the changing practices thereof form the core of her study; her practice emerges through a close collaboration with people, their histories and environments.
She has been producing/ directing / writing/ editing & photographing films for well over a decade and continues to explore boundaries of fiction/non-fiction, photography, video essay, digital art and multi media installation. With her recent work, Pilgrimage in Nomad’s land she explores the emergent domain of Interactive Trans-media. It can be watched online @ www.nomadsfilmschool.com
Sameera Jain
Sameera Jain is a filmmaker and editor, and has worked for over 30 years in the arena of film and video. Sameera has edited several award-winning documentaries and some fiction feature films. Her directorial ventures “Portraits of Belonging”, “Born at Home” and “Mera Apna Sheher (My Own City)” have been acknowledged for cinematic excellence at national and international festivals. Sameera has been on film juries and participated in curriculum formulation at various institutions. She has been mentoring film students and filmmakers at diverse platforms and has been invited to teach filmmaking at many places, including her alma mater FTII. She has conceptualized, and is Course Director of the Creative Documentary course at SACAC (Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communication) in New Delhi.
Ranjani Mazumdar
Ranjani Mazumdar is Professor of Cinema Studies at the School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her publications focus on urban cultures, popular cinema, gender and the cinematic city. She is the author of Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City (2007) and co-editor with Neepa Majumdar of the forthcoming Wiley Blackwell Companion to Indian Cinema. She has also worked as a documentary filmmaker and her productions include Delhi Diary 2001 and The Power of the Image (Co-Directed). Her current research focuses on globalisation and film culture, and the intersection of technology, travel, design and colour in 1960s Bombay Cinema.
Ritesh Uttamchandani
Ritesh began his journey as a photographer watching his elder sister take photos of his family but sadly, he didn’t register it back then and began his journey as a professional in 2004 as an intern at the Indian Express. Inspired by the work of Reza Deghati, David Alan Harvey and of course, the usual suspects, Henri Cartier Bresson, Eugene Smith etc, he moved over to the Hindustan times and finally the OPEN Magazine where he worked for seven years before stepping into the fascinating and often scary world of freelance.
In his decade-long experience as a photojournalist, he has reported and documented some of the major events of national and international importance in the Indian subcontinent and has recently self-published his first photo book, The Red Cat and Other Stories, which looks at the city of Bombay through the lens of a fable his mother used to narrate to him when he was a child. The book, equal parts travelogue and journalism, is a tribute to the beauty in the mundane.
Ratheesh Radhakrishnan
Ratheesh Radhakrishnan teaches at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Bombay, Mumbai. He completed his PhD from the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (Bangalore), and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Chao Centre for Asian Studies, Rice University (Houston, USA). While at Rice University, he founded and curated TITLES: A Festival of Experimental Films from India (2011- 2014). He is currently part of the India programming team of MAMI – Mumbai Film Festival. His research on Malayalam cinema has appeared in a variety of journals and other publications, both in English and in Malayalam.
Jabeen Merchant
Jabeen Merchant is a film practitioner with a wide and varied experience within the independent filmmaking community as well as the mainstream film industry. She is well known for her work editing and co-scripting a number of internationally celebrated documentaries in collaboration with some of India’s best filmmakers. Side by side, she has edited a range of fiction feature films, including the critically acclaimed ‘Anaarkali of Aarah’; commercially successful thrillers like ‘NH10’ and ‘Manorama Six Feet Under’; the off-beat comedy ‘The President Is Coming’; art-house films such as ‘Kadvi Hawa’ and the soon to be released ‘The Sweet Requiem’. Apart from editing films, she teaches, consults on scripts and occasionally writes on cinema.
Swati Dandekar
Swati Dandekar is a film practitioner with a special interest in creating visual narratives of the living history around her; of people, places, ideas, traditions and practices. Her most recent work is “Neeli Raag”, a feature length documentary on the natural dye indigo, and the few remaining craftsmen who still work with it.
Her earlier work includes a series of essay films that look at urban India, in particular at the changes taking place in small towns and cities, and explore the relationship between land, people, resources and the institutions that govern them. She was also closely involved in documenting best practices in elementary education, as well as designing and making radio and video programmes for rural school children. As part of Vikalp, Swati has been involved in screening documentary films in the city for over 10 years.
Swati teaches film at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore.
Amit Mahanti
Amit Mahanti is a filmmaker, cameraperson and editor, who has worked on films and video installations that explore questions of ecological transformation, culture and politics. His films include ML 05 B 6055 (2008), Malegaon Times (2012), Every Time You Tell A Story (2015) and Scratches on Stone (2017).
He has also been selected for art/film residency programs at Khoj Studios, New Delhi; Parco Arte Vivente Experimental Centre of Contemporary Art, Turin; Kran Film, Brussels and Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski, Warsaw. He was also a recipient of the Charles Wallace India Trust Short-term Fellowship, 2016.
Sushma Veerappa
After a Post-graduate diploma in Social Communications Media from Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai, Sushma joined the CIEDS Collective Here, she conceived and executed a film education programme for school children. Post this experience, she worked as Assistant Director and Scriptwriter with filmmaker M.S.Sathyu for 4 years. She began making documentaries in 1998.
As Producer / Director, her focus has been on documenting the work of grass root organizations working in Karnataka’s remote villages. Her films have been used as communication tools by these organizations to further engage with the people they work with. Her work encompasses a wide spectrum – about people’s co-operatives, leadership imaging as participatory research tool, training modules for blue collar workers, issues relating to water, women and violence.
Her concerns with the city in transition led her to produce and direct her first independent documentary WHEN SHANKAR NAG COMES ASKING. Her last short film SHEELA GOWDA AT BATTARAHALLI CORNER was screened at the 13th IAWRT (International Association of Women in Film and Television) Festival. Along with 4 other filmmakers, Sushma is part of Vikalp Bengaluru, a group which has been screening documentaries in the city since 2005.
Sabari Pandian
Sabari Pandian works as an assistant director in documentary films. Some of the films that he has assisted on are ‘Nostalgia for the future’ and ‘Electric Shadows: Journeys In Image-making’. Based in Bombay he also loves to travel and take photographs. He is currently pursuing his Bachelor of Science in Information Technology from Mumbai University. An avid film buff, Sabari loves being part of film festivals and has provided technical support for film festivals such as Urban Lens Film Festival (2016) and the IAWRT Asian Women’s Film Festival (2017).
Kunal Deshpande
Kunal Deshpande is an alumnus of the Srishti School of Art Design and Technology, Bangalore. His diploma film, Daryache Raje (Kings of the Sea) was selected and screened at the 6th Kirloskar Vasundhara Environmental Film Festival.
He has since worked as a cinematographer, director and editor on projects ranging from documentaries on the water resources and climate adaptation practices in the north-east, to lifestyle exploration films in Kutch, and people-oriented films. He has worked on feature films like Ferrari Ki Sawaari, on television shows and various other projects.
Kunal also worked at the IIHS where he was part of the Media Lab, creating a variety of audio visual outputs for teams and projects. He worked on videos on the process of campus development, on climate change adaptation, and on festivals such as the Urban Lens film festival and Cityscripts. He is now engaged with IIHS in the capacity of an External Consultant.
He is currently producing and directing SupperClub India, a food and travel web series, as well as producing videos for several corporate clients and brands.
TejInder Singh
TejInder, is an independent photographer and researcher. He is also senior urban fellow at Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bangalore. He has had a range of work experiences from that of a trainee architect to managing electoral campaigns, participating in Model UN conferences, and documenting and archiving contemporary issues. He has photo documented Gaurav Gagoi’s campaign for Assam assembly elections, Occupy UGC movement, Swaraj Abhiyaan’s Jai Kisan Andolon, City Scripts – The IIHS Urban Writing Festival, 2017 IAWRT Asian Women’s Film Festival, Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival Word to Screen Bootcamp and many more conferences and events across India. His work on Ennore Creek Power Plant has been published by Scroll.in and Urbanisation – a SAGE journal.


Home»A FEATURED STORY»Susan Gibson still making a name for herself after ‘Wide Open Spaces’
A FEATURED STORY/ALL EVENTS/GREAT FALLS Performances/PERFORMING ARTS
Susan Gibson still making a name for herself after ‘Wide Open Spaces’
Jake Sorich / January 28, 2015 /	0	/	1k
Susan Gibson
Many musicians go their entire careers searching for that one hit, that one piece of music that strikes a cord and connects with millions of people across the world. Some are lucky enough to do it once or twice after years of toiling in anonymity. Some never get that chance.
But, what happens when an artist catches that lightning in a bottle at the very start of his or her career?
Such was the case for Susan Gibson, a Grammy-winning singer/songwriter in Texas with lots of ties to the Treasure State.
Gibson is best known for writing the hit Dixie Chicks song “Wide Open Spaces.”
After writing the song in 1993, Gibson had it produced by Lloyd Maines, father of the new lead singer for the Dixie Chicks in the mid 90s, Natalie Maines.
Gibson returns to Montana on Friday to play a free show at the Mighty Mo Brewery at 5 p.m. She’s also playing a private house event this weekend, which was what allowed her to come play a free public show, also.
Even if she never reaches that level of success again commercially, Gibson said in an interview with Big Sky State Buzz that she’ll be forever grateful for the doors that “Wide Open Spaces” opened for her.
After coming out on July 28, 1998, the song hit No. 1 on the U.S. Country Singles chart, where it stayed there for four weeks.
It was named the Country Music Association Awards Single of the Year in 1999 and won Gibson the American Songwriter Professional Country Songwriter of the Year award in early 2000.
“I had been writing songs since I was going to school at the University of Montana right at the beginning of my career, but it wasn’t really even a career yet, just an expensive hobby,” Gibson said. “(Wide Open Spaces) put me on the map as a songwriter and that affirmation is really kind of indescribable because here we are, 17 or 18 years after that song was No. 1 in on the country music charts and I’m still getting to talk about that song and the doors it opened for me. One of those doors, for example, was the ability to work with some pretty cool folks.”
While Gibson’s career hasn’t reached that level of mass appeal since then, to say she hasn’t written anything as authentic or as high-quality would be a mistake.
The Second Hand (2014) by Susan Gibson
Since 2003 Gibson’s release four solo albums, “Chin Up” (2003), “Outerspace” (2005), “New Dog, Old Tricks” (2008) and 2011’s “Tight Rope.” She also released an album of live tracks titled “The Second Hand” last year.
Gibson plays acoustic country with folk elements. She said most of songs tell a story that touches on some kind of thought or feeling that she had while writing it.
“I love telling stories and about kind of how I got to the song or how the song got to me,” she said.
Being a songwriter, she said that immediately after “Wide Open Spaces,” she felt that pressure to produce another hit that was just as popular, if not more so.
She said eventually she came to the realization that what mattered to her more was writing songs that resonated with her and her audiences rather than the millions of people who only knew her from that single track she wrote as a college kid.
“I had to go through a period where I would try not writing ‘Wide Open Spaces’ again and just let every that song be exactly what it was,” she said. “Because when I wrote that song, I wasn’t a songwriter, I was a college student who played open mics once and a while, and really I hope I’m always getting better as a writer.
“The fact that I had that song right out of the gates by no means means it’s my best song I’ve ever written. As I’ve grown, too, I think my goal is now to have, you know, 20 years from now, a body of work that I still love to sing that still resonates with people, that is timeless in a way.”
Gibson added that as long as she has new stuff to perform to mix in with her old tunes, she’ll always love coming back to Montana to play.
“My dad is from Missoula and he has cabin on Flathead Lake, where we spent all of our summers and … so I’ve always felt very connected and at home in Montana,” she said. “I have a nice career going for me down in Texas, but man, I would love to live in Montana all the time. I think it’s a great state.”
She said she’s also excited to play a small venue such as the Mighty Mo because it’s a much more intimate experience for both her and her audience.
“In a show like this one there’s more accountability, and in a sense the rewards are greater because there’s really no separation between you and the audience,” she said. “I don’t know how else to put it but it’s very direct. There isn’t a big stage with big sound and big lights that feed your ego as a performer, it’s ‘here’s this song in its most bare-bones form,’ because it shouldn’t be all about me. It’s about bringing songs to people and putting that out there and having an experience with them.”
Along those same lines, Gibson said while many of the songs she performs are personal in nature, she said once they’ve been written, they have to stand on their own, meaning she can’t take offense if that song doesn’t reach someone as much as other songs do because music is so subjective.
“If I get feedback from people, no matter what it is, say someone laughs at a line or they poke their boyfriend after hearing a line or they whatever, I need that kind of feedback and that’s why I care more about playing live than I do about selling records because I want to be in the room with you and I love getting a reaction from people who hear my music,” she said. “I think one of my biggest strengths is in that kind of relationship and connection I get with my audience when you know, you’re able to open up and show the puppet strings on your songs.”
For more information on Susan Gibson, check out her website here.
Tags:Dixie ChicksMighty MoSusan Gibson
Internal morality examined at Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde performance on Thursday
Russell Museum showing Western Art inspired films starting in February
Alt-country star Cindy Jollotta’s new single ‘Ghosts’ a personal powerhouse
Mighty Mo Brewery hosting month-long music events for local charities in February
Spokane’s Marshall McLean joins Ryan Johnson for free show at Mighty Mo on Saturday
A FEATURED STORY/ALL EVENTS/BILLINGS Community/COMMUNITY EVENTS/MMA
Fusion Fight League hold’s first sanctioned MMA event in Montana history next weekend


Reviews of “Wilson” by A. Scott Berg
Posted by Steve in 3rd Party Reviews, U.S. Presidents
biographies, book reviews, Henry Adams Prize, presidential biographies, Scott Berg, Woodrow Wilson
by A. Scott Berg
Henry Adams Prize (2014)
Boston Globe review from September 2013
New York Times review from September 2013
Washington Post review from September 2013
The Washington Times review from September 2013
The Dallas Morning News review from September 2013
Miami Herald review from September 2013
South China Morning Post review from October 2013
The Oregonian review from October 2013
NPR interview with A. Scott Berg from September 2013
“One hundred years after his inauguration, Woodrow Wilson still stands as one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century, and one of the most enigmatic. And now, after more than a decade of research and writing, Pulitzer Prize–winning author A. Scott Berg has completed Wilson—the most personal and penetrating biography ever written about the twenty-eighth President.
In addition to the hundreds of thousands of documents in the Wilson Archives, Berg was the first biographer to gain access to two recently discovered caches of papers belonging to those close to Wilson. From this material, Berg was able to add countless details—even several unknown events—that fill in missing pieces of Wilson’s character, and cast new light on his entire life.
From the visionary Princeton professor who constructed a model for higher education in America to the architect of the ill-fated League of Nations, from the devout Commander in Chief who ushered the country through its first great World War to the widower of intense passion and turbulence who wooed a second wife with hundreds of astonishing love letters, from the idealist determined to make the world “safe for democracy” to the stroke-crippled leader whose incapacity—and the subterfuges around it—were among the century’s greatest secrets, from the trailblazer whose ideas paved the way for the New Deal and the Progressive administrations that followed to the politician whose partisan battles with his opponents left him a broken man, and ultimately, a tragic figure—this is a book at once magisterial and deeply emotional about the whole of Wilson’s life, accomplishments, and failings. This is not just Wilson the icon—but Wilson the man.”
Enjoy presidential biographies? Check out: http://www.bestpresidentialbios.com


Why We Give: The Jones Family
In December, the Jones family pledged their support in the form of a multi-year pledge as a Partners in Hospitality Sustainer. Here’s why:
Why is the Family House important to your family?
Several years ago, my wife Sara’s parents were involved in a near-fatal automobile accident near Augusta, GA. They were air-lifted to the Medical College of Georgia and she and her sister spent a month there while their mother was in intensive care. Their experience in Augusta was extremely stressful, and the situation was compounded by staying at a lonely bare-bones hotel and having many nights of eating fast food or at best, institutional meals in the hospital cafeteria. This experience allowed us to understand first-hand the need for a welcoming place like the SECU Family House to relax and unwind after long hours in the hospital.
What is your favorite Family House memory?
During the first year I was on the Board of Directors, our family volunteered to serve Thanksgiving dinner to the Family House guests. Instead of having guests sit at individual tables to eat, we decided to push all the tables together to create one big family table. It was truly amazing to watch individuals and families with heartbreaking situations come together as one big family sharing a meal. There was a lot of laughter and comfort shared that night, as well as delicious pumpkin pie.
To this day I don’t know who received the biggest blessing that night, the families staying at the Family House or our own family.
Why support families and guests who are in a medical crisis when there are many other worthy non-profits?
We have always tried to keep our charitable donations local. With Sara working at Wake Forest Baptist School of Medicine and myself spending 28 years with the State Employees’ Credit Union, as well as our own family experience with medical crises, it just makes sense for us to support the SECU Family House.
Why should others consider a multi-year pledge?
Organizations like the Family House need to be able to plan for the future and multi-year pledges give them a solid basis from which they can commit to helping people into the future…The Jones Family has participated in the Family House since the doors opened. Jeff served on the board of directors as a SECU representative from 2010-2016. His son Matthew completed his Eagle Scout project here in 2017.
The Jones Family has participated in the Family House since the doors opened. Jeff served on the board of directors as a SECU representative from 2010-2016. His son Matthew completed his Eagle Scout project here in 2017.
Learn About Partners in Hospitality Read More Stories


S7 Airlines Starts Flights from Novosibirsk to Guangzhou
S7 Airlines is starting direct flights from Novosibirsk to Guangzhou (China) on May 21, 2019. Tickets are already available.
The flights will be operated on Tuesdays and Sundays. Departure from Tolmachevo Airport is at 21:10, and arrival in Guangzhou is at 04:15 local time on the following day. The return flight departs on Wednesdays and Mondays at 05:15 and arrives in Novosibirsk at 10:50.
“Guangzhou, the third largest city in China, was added to the S7 Airlines schedule at the end of last year, when the airline started direct regular flights from Irkutsk. Now we are pleased to offer flights to Guangzhou to passengers from Novosibirsk as well. This is an attractive destination both for sightseeing and for business travel. Every year, the Canton Fair is held in Guangzhou, representing a platform for dialogue with Asian partners, ” said Igor Veretennikov, commercial director of S7 Group.
At the same time, passengers from China will appreciate the opportunity to travel comfortably to the cities of the route network with convenient connections in a key Siberian hub — Tolmachevo Airport.
S7 Airlines also operates direct flights to Beijing from Novosibirsk, Vladivostok, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, to Shanghai from Novosibirsk and Vladivostok, to Hong Kong from Vladivostok, Irkutsk, and Novosibirsk.
Members of the S7 Priority loyalty program will be able to earn 500 miles for a flight from Novosibirsk to Guangzhou. Accumulated S7 Priority miles can be used to get award tickets and additional services.
Guangzhou S7 Airlines
World’s Largest Aircraft  Completes First Flight
SpiceJet to Launch New International Flights from Mumbai
Belavia Carried Out the First Flight to Munich
On July 15, 2019 Belavia carried out the first regular flight on the route Minsk-Munich-Minsk. Flights will be carried out 4 times a week on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays with the departure from Minsk at 12:30...
S7 Airlines Starts Testing a Face Recognition System
S7 Airlines launched a face recognition system pilot at the Domodedovo hub airport. The system is currently operational at the executive lounge in the domestic departures area. The software...
Heathrow and First Bus Launch a New Service to Guildford
Heathrow has teamed up with First Bus to offer passengers and colleagues traveling from Guildford a more sustainable way of getting to and from the airport, starting this month. The partnership sees the launch of a new...


The Virtual Reality Roving Vehicle Project
DR. WILLIAM WINN, Director Human Interface Technology Laboratory's Learning Center University of Washington Seattle, Wash. Between November 1994 and June 1995, almost 3,000 students in grades four through 12 throughout the state of Washington experienced Virtual Reality (VR) in their classrooms. Another 365 built their own Virtual Worlds. The Virtual Reality Roving Vehicle project (VRRV, pronounced "verve") was funded by the US WEST Foundation to bring VR equipment and experiences to children in all areas of the state. The project was based at the Human Interface Technology Laboratory (HITL), part of the Washington Technology Center on the University of Washington campus in Seattle. The VRRV team consisted of software designers and engineers from HITL, Educational Technology faculty and students from the College of Education, a cadre of "Van Techs" who did everything from loading and driving vans to giving presentations and demonstrations in schools, plus students and teachers in close to 70 schools. Here, I describe what we did, how we did it, what we learned and what we plan to do next. What We Did Our goals were ambitious. First, we wanted as many children as possible to experience immersive VR and to discuss with them its potential and limitations. Popular media has hyped VR to excess and we felt that youngsters need to understand that VR is a technology that still has to mature before it is used widely. Second, we wanted to get our high-end workstations and software out of the lab and into children's hands, confident that they would use them effectively and imaginatively. And third, we wanted to see whether having students build virtual worlds that embodied concepts and principles they were learning as part of their regular curriculum would help them understand what they were studying. We were especially interested in determining whether this radically new technology and the learning strategies it supports can help children who are judged by traditional criteria to be less likely to succeed in school. Experience has shown that the only way technology can be successful in schools is if teachers and students have access to the machines they need, have the software to make them work, and have the knowledge and skill to take control of both. We addressed the access issue by setting up a van-based outreach program that carried VR workstations to schools. In the schools where worlds were built, we addressed software and control issues by providing the schools with modeling software that teachers and students learned to use, by building our own Supercard tool for automatically generating computer code that made virtual objects behave in particular ways, by putting on training workshops for teachers, and by working long hours with children as they planned and built their worlds. We used two vans. Each was equipped with a Division, Inc. Provision 100 workstation, a head-mounted display that provides stereo vision and audio, a hand-held "wand" for moving through virtual worlds and manipulating virtual objects, and an electromagnetic tracker that tracked both the position and attitude of the student's hand and head. The Provision 100 is a 486 system running UNIX. It achieves its high rate for rendering graphic images by graphics boards that provide massively parallel graphic processing. The system has sound capability. It runs dVISE software from Division (based in the U.K., with a U.S. office) that uses a C-like scripting language that serves to build and run virtual worlds. A limited amount of authoring and editing can be done through a graphic interface that runs under X-Windows. Centered Around Two Projects Our plan centered around two projects, which we called the "Hors d''euvre" and the "Entreé." All schools enjoyed the hors d''euvre; 14 stayed for the entreé. For the hors d''euvre, we took a van to each of the VRRV schools for a day, longer in a few cases. We began by giving a presentation about VR to one or two classes of students and their teachers, spending time discussing VR with them. The rest of the day we demonstrated commercially produced virtual worlds to as many as 50 students. Each student spent 5-10 minutes in a virtual world. We showed each one how to move around in the world and to interact with its objects using a "wand," a joystick-like device you hold in your hand. As you move it vertically, horizontally, towards you or away from you, the virtual hand you see in the helmet moves correspondingly. You can also tilt your hand around any axis. Five buttons control how you pick up and move objects and how you "fly" through the world. One may also walk around in the world, but this is limited by the tracker's range and the length of the cable attaching the wand and helmet to the computer. Once briefed, students put on the helmet and visited the world. For the entreé, we spent a number of days over an average of six weeks in each school working with teachers and their students. Our first visit was set up to take place at the point in the class where the teacher had taught enough content for students to be able to design effective worlds. We began our work in the schools by explaining the four-step world-building process: Planning: Students decided how they would represent the concepts and principles that their world embodied. Modeling: They drew and built their objects on Macs using Macromedia's Macromodel 3D graphics software. Programming: Students determined how objects were to interact with each other and with the participant, which guided HITL's programmers on how to put the worlds together. Experiencing, where students visited the worlds they had created and performed their assigned tasks. In subsequent visits, we worked with them at each step in the process, spending at least three days in each school. Students visited their worlds on the final visit. How We Did It We identified our initial group of VRRV schools through a questionnaire distributed at the NCCE Conference in Spokane in the spring of 1994. During the summer and early fall of 1994, teachers who had indicated an interest were invited to HITL in groups of two or three. We briefed them on the project and had them experience VR for themselves. (Other schools joined along the way.) In late fall of 1994, we held a day-long workshop for VRRV teachers and administrators on the University of Washington campus. In the morning, HITL staff gave presentations about previous work on educational applications of VR, other HITL projects and a more detailed overview of the VRRV program. In the afternoon, teachers brainstormed on how to use VR in their curriculum while the administrators met with VRRV staff to discuss how the project might best be implemented in their schools and districts. At day's end, teachers interested in being part of the world-building phase of the project were invited to submit proposals to us describing what they would like to do. Fourteen of these were selected by the end of the year; others went on a waiting list for the 95-96 school year. Worlds proposed and actually built included: A space station in which students could recycle waste materials; a medieval castle; a microcomputer, parts of which students had to assemble themselves; a rain forest whose over-exploitation resulted in an ecological disaster; a fly-over of Washington state that helped students learn their local geography; and nine others. In early 95, two full-day workshops were held for teachers selected for the entreé, during which we introduced them to the Macromodel software. Meeting in a school computer lab, the entire day was devoted to "hands-on" activities. At the end, one teacher from each school was given a set of disks to load onto their own machines. (A number of schools had to upgrade machines to 12MB of RAM and to add a math processor to run the software well.) We provided the software for free under a site license that we had purchased from Macromedia. Subsequently, several elementary teachers told us the software was too complex for their students to learn in the available time, so we modified the project for the elementary schools. Elementary students would all work on a common "Tree World" in which their task was to make a tree healthy by providing it with sunlight, water and nutrients. HITL staff built the basic Tree World. Students contributed objects that depend on healthy trees for their own survival -- everything from fruit to giraffes. We added these to the basic Tree World, creating a different version for each elementary school. In this way, everyone was able to contribute to the world without having to master 3D CAD. Finally, in February 95, we held another full-day workshop in which we covered four topics: instructional design, what VR can do best, assessment of learning from VR, and project management. At its end, each school signed up for a start date when VRRV staff would make their first visit to the school. We intended the projects to be staggered to spread our workload over the rest of the school year. Perhaps predictably, this did not work! A lot of the labor piled up at the school year's end. We also provided each school with a Teacher's Manual on world-building that we had written. The hors d''euvre had started in November and was well underway by this time. Indeed, the hors d''euvre operated fairly independently from the entreé, with its own van, personnel and computer system. We hired a pool of people who loaded, drove and unloaded the van; gave presentations to students; and ran the school demonstrations. Initially, these operated an easy day's drive from Seattle, returning to HITL at the end. Later in the year, we took vans to other areas of the state with a crew (always two people) that visited four schools a week. A lot of effort went into coordinating the program with schools throughout the state and we remain grateful to those who were flexible enough to accommodate our last-minute schedule changes caused by computer crashes, bad weather and the occasional scheduling conflict. What We Learned Needless to say, we were anxious to find out whether we had been successful in achieving our goals of helping children understand VR and of using world-building to teach content. However, our research agenda extended beyond simply determining if the students had learned anything. Any technology tends to be better at supporting some pedagogies over others. Our approach to teaching and learning was based on the premise that the acts of planning, designing and building virtual environments would help students construct an understanding of the topic they were working on. This "constructivist" approach required that most of the decision-making be placed in the hands of the students. We therefore spent a lot of time facilitating discussion in small groups of students as they argued and debated about the appearance and functionality of their world. Our role was largely one of keeping students' ambitions within the limits of what our VR systems could actually do. We were anxious to find out whether using constructivist pedagogy that VR supports so well would lead to different outcomes when compared to outcomes from students learning similar content in more traditional ways. In schools where more than one class was studying the same material (in some of the secondary schools), we were able to compare what students learned from world-building with what others learned from more traditional teaching. However, the VRRV project was by no means a controlled experiment and our findings to date are more suggestive than conclusive. We were also curious about how student characteristics affected how well they learned from world-building. We measured all students' general ability and middle and high school students' spatial ability. We also looked at how gender affected the outcomes. Pre- and post-tests of content were given to the secondary students. We also gave exit questionnaires to all students, interviewed some and videotaped others. The tests of content were teacher-built. They varied considerably in the content they tested, since at the secondary level each class built a different world in a different area of the curriculum. They also varied in scope and format. For this reason, we standardized test scores before conducting our statistical analysis. Finally, we gave a questionnaire that assessed students' attitudes towards science and computers. For the hors d''euvre, we gave every student an exit questionnaire. This asked them to rate on a five-point scale everything from how much they enjoyed the experience, to how easy it was to navigate in the virtual world, to the extent to which they experienced "presence" -- the conviction that they were really in another place when in the virtual world. We have gathered a large amount of data. The following is a brief description of some of the most important findings -- the tip of a very big iceberg. Beyond the purely descriptive data, the results that we mention below come from statistical analyses whose findings were significant at the .05 probability level. The Hors d''euvre Group Results From questionnaires given to 1,001 students in elementary schools, 922 students in middle schools and 949 high school students who experienced VR as part of the hors d''euvre: Students rated their enjoyment of the experience as very high with a negligible number of reports of queasiness. The latter finding is important because it allays the fear that exposure to VR, at least over short periods, has bad side effects. Difficulty moving around the world and interacting with it, as well as ratings of disorientation inside and on leaving the virtual world, decreased with age. The wand was difficult to hold and manipulate if you had small hands! Rated enjoyment of the experience and the sense of presence decreased with age. Perhaps the older children were more jaded in their attitudes to the technology. A factor analysis of the scale scores on the questionnaires showed remarkably consistent results across elementary, middle and high school students. In each case, the VR experience was shown to have three clear dimensions: Enjoyment/presence, disorientation/ malaise, and the ability to perform tasks. Interestingly, these three factors -- identifying affective, physiological and cognitive dimensions to the VR experience -- have been found, with very different populations, in other HITL projects. The Entrée Group Results From data obtained from 365 middle and high-school students who took part in world-building, not all of whom completed all tests, we can report: Students who built virtual worlds did learn the content they were expected to. Students who built virtual worlds did equally well regardless of their general ability. In the case of students who learned equivalent content in traditional ways, low-ability students did less well than high-ability students. This suggests that knowledge construction through a world-building activity helps students who might not learn well from traditional methods. This effect was most noticeable for boys. Students who built virtual worlds had consistently better attitudes towards science and computers after the experience, stating more frequently, for example, that scientists were honest, that they would consider taking science and computer courses in college, and follow careers in science and computing. Students learned more and enjoyed the project more who: used 3D models to visualize their world before they built their object on the computer; were easily able to find the object they had made when they visited their virtual world; and reported experiencing a high level of presence.
Students who had difficulty navigating in the virtual world or who lacked a clear understanding of the tasks they were to perform in it learned less and enjoyed the experience less. Students who collaborated with other students learned more and enjoyed the project more. Girls with low spatial ability reported feeling less presence. At the elementary level, boys reported they had learned more about VR than girls and also that they needed less time than girls to build their worlds. At the secondary level, boys enjoyed the world-building more than girls and spent more time on the computers. We can report, anecdotally, that boys often tended to "hog" the computers and to dominate a lot of the activities, which could account for these findings. High spatial ability was correlated with enjoyment, learning and the feeling of presence. Suggested Conclusions Our findings suggest a number of conclusions, all of which require confirmation under more rigorously controlled conditions. First, it worked! Our students did learn from designing and building virtual worlds. Notice that we do not claim that visiting the worlds they created taught them content. (We have learned in other projects, however, that students can learn from worlds built for them by someone else.) The acts of researching, designing and constructing worlds was the deciding factor. Next, the project seemed to level the playing field for less-able students. We believe that VR takes advantage of visual and kinesthetic abilities and learning strategies that are less likely to be used by students in more traditional, symbolic modes of instruction. Next, working with VR is motivating, as one would expect. Finally, general ability, spatial ability and gender all influence the cognitive and affective outcomes of working with VR. What We Plan to Do Next From now until the end of the academic year, the hors d''euvre part of the project moves to Nebraska. With further funding, we hope to take the project to other states in subsequent years. Of course, we are looking forward to the day when the entire project can be conducted over a network and we can dispense with the vans. But, again, to take that step requires significant resources that we do not yet have. World-building will continue in some Washington schools where the project's research on the effectiveness of world-building and of world-visiting will continue. Our studies will be more carefully designed and executed so that we can begin to explore more thoroughly the questions concerning what aspects of VR contribute to what kinds of learning, and the influence of general ability, spatial ability and gender on learning from building and visiting worlds. Further Information: Several reports about our work on educational applications of VR can be found at HITL's Web site (www.hitl.washington.edu) under "Publications." Information about HITL's Learning Center and the VRRV project can be found under "Projects"; information about our team is under "People." We will continue to make our reports available on the Web as we complete them. In the meantime, we are encouraged by the progress we report in this article and are looking forward to "pushing the envelope" with the help of the creative and energetic children in our the public schools here and around the country. William Winn, a professor in the Educational Technology program in the College of Education, is also Director of the Human Interface Technology Laboratory's Learning Center at the University of Washington. He holds an adjunct professorship in Technical Communication in the College of Engineering. Winn's research focuses on how people perceive and learn from maps, diagrams and pictures and on how cognitive and constructivist theories of learning can be used effectively by instructional designers. His work on the applications of Virtual Reality to education, some of which is reported here, brings together these two research interests. The VRRV project started while Winn was on sabbatical at the Human Interface Technology Laboratory during part of the 1994-95 school year. E-mail: billwinn@u.washington.edu Products mentioned in this article: Provision 100 system, dVISE software; Division, Inc., Chapel Hill, NC, (919) 968-7797 Macromodel 3D; Macromedia, San Francisco, CA, (415) 252-2000
Delivering Desktops Virtually
As Lubbock Independent School District makes the transition from Windows devices to Chromebooks, it's relying more and more heavily on virtual desktop infrastructure to give users — both students and staff — access to the learning and work applications and other tools that still require Windows access. At the beginning of 2019, over a single weekend, the Texas district implemented hyperconverged infrastructure, and it's not looking back. As Chief Technology Officer, Damon Jackson, and Senior Platform Technology Engineer, Jason Blackburn, discuss, HCI has given them the "Easy Button" they sought for network management and delivered "remarkably faster" performance. Read more...