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Focus On The Bay: Pfiesteria And The Chesapeake Bay Ecosystem -- Symposia At Annual Meeting To Examine Science Policy On Pfiesteria And The Bay
To lay the groundwork for future environmental policy governing Pfiesteria and the Chesapeake Bay, the Ecological Society of America and the American Institute of Biological Sciences will host the "Pfiesteria in Maryland" and "Chesapeake Bay Ecosystem" symposia at their joint annual meeting, held in Baltimore, Maryland, on August 2-6, 1998.
Pfiesteria piscicida is a toxic dinoflagellate--algae's animal counterpart. One of its forms is also the most likely cause of several menhaden fish kills in three Chesapeake Bay tributaries during the summer of 1997. Scientific uncertainty about Pfiesteria persists, making a retrospective analysis of the events of 1997, in the form of "Pfiesteria in Maryland," integral to Pfiesteria study, as well as to the study of science policy and scientific uncertainty, in general. This symposium will be held on Monday, August 3, from 8:00 a.m. to Noon in room 314 of the Baltimore Convention Center.
Scientists believe Pfiesteria, and other Pfiesteria-like dinoflagellates practically indistinguishable from Pfiesteria, to be symptomatic of coastal eutrophication--algal growth spurred by nutrient influx--and to be a world-wide problem. Other Pfiesteria outbreaks have affected coastal areas of North Carolina and Florida. Therefore, the study of Pfiesteria policy also requires an understanding of Chesapeake Bay ecosystem health and the role of eutrophication as presented in the symposium, "Chesapeake Bay Ecosystem." This symposium will be held on Tuesday, August 4, from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. in room 314 of the Baltimore Convention Center.
Pfiesteria first made its science policy mark as a human health fear. Wayne H. Bell, Vice President for External Relations at the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science and organizer of the "Pfiesteria in Maryland" symposium, notes that, "a University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University study of 27 affected individuals found symptoms that included acute skin burning, confusion, and short term memory loss." The inherent complexity of environmental policy-making became even more apparent when the seafood industry experienced a drop in sales brought on by the public's fear of contaminated fish.
During the rush of events in the summer of '97, decisions about Pfiesteria were made. Now, it's time to evaluate those decisions, to address the present and future uncertainty of Pfiesteria activity, and to work towards improved future science policy in this symposium.
Key actors representing the multiple perspectives necessary for environmental policy-making in the Chesapeake Bay Pfiesteria drama will participate. JoAnn Burkholder, of North Carolina State University, is the recognized authority on Pfiesteria and will provide its unfolding biological story. The challenge of monitoring for Pfiesteria and hypothesizing the when and where of its arrivals will be discussed by Robert Magnien, Director of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Tidewater Ecosystem Assessment Division. Tim Wheeler, of the Baltimore Sun, will elucidate the media's communication role in early reports to the public. Russell Brinsfield, of the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of Maryland College Park and Director of the Wye Research and Education Center on Maryland's Eastern Shore, will introduce preliminary concerns about the role of agricultural runoff in the development of Pfiesteria.
Informed environmental policy-making is the key to minimizing uncertainty about Pfiesteria. In the "Pfiesteria in Maryland" symposium, Bell hopes hard questions such as how scientists, state agency personnel, agricultural interests, members of the media, and citizens dealt with these uncertainties and how the uncertainties were overcome to produce significant new regulations, may contain important lessons for the development of future environmental policy.
In the closely related "Chesapeake Bay Ecosystem" symposium, to be held Tuesday, August 4, the overall health of the Chesapeake Bay will be addressed by Grace Brush, of the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Brush's sedimentary core study depicts dramatic food web and water quality changes. A gradual shift in human food reliance from fishing to agriculture gives a rough explanation for Brush's results. However, the actual detailed interaction of nutrients, algal growth, oxygen depletion, and large-scale ecosystem change is worth further exploration.
Introduction of non-indigenous species, alteration of fish and shrimp habitat, and inputs of nutrients are the other "Chesapeake Bay Ecosystem" symposium topics.
On non-indigenous species, Gregory M. Ruiz, of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, states, "...it is clear that [Non-Indigenous Species] invasions have fundamentally altered population, community, and ecosystem processes, and resulted in significant economic impacts, in the Chesapeake." Research to be presented by Anson H. Hines, of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, describes some of these Chesapeake Bay community changes, "Historically in Chesapeake Bay, juvenile and small fish and [shrimp] obtained highest abundances in submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV), oyster reefs, and abundant woody debris. With loss of marshes, removal of woody debris, decline of SAV, and demise of oyster reefs, these organisms shifted to primarily shallow nearshore water."
In the future, Dr. Brush may expand her sedimentary core study to include historical information about Pfiesteria type organisms--shedding more light on the denizen troubling the Chesapeake Bay.
Annual Meeting Information
Members of the media and freelance writers are invited to attend the Ecological Society of America's 1998 Annual Meeting to be held in Baltimore, Maryland, on August 2-6, 1998. This year's meeting is being held in conjunction with The American Institute for Biological Sciences and eight other societies. The theme is "Ecological Exchanges Between Major Ecosystems" and some 3,200 scientists will be in attendance. The meeting will feature symposia, field trips, and numerous poster and paper presentations.
ESA Plenary Session (August 4, 1998)
Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt is scheduled to open this year's plenary. His speech is entitled "Restoring Watersheds and Ecosystems at the Turn of the Millennium." Rosina Bierbaum, Acting Associate Director for the Environment of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, will close with a speech on "Achieving a Sustainable Future: Challenges and Opportunities in Monitoring and Assessment of Our Nation's Ecosystems." William C. Baker, President of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and William Matuszeski, Director of EPA's Chesapeake Bay Program Office will also speak at the plenary. There will be a press availability for all speakers after the plenary.
All-Society Opening Ceremonies (August 2, 1998)
Rita Colwell, the newly confirmed Director of the National Science Foundation, will present the keynote address. Her speech is entitled "Balancing the Biocomplexity of the Planet's Living Systems: A 21st Century Task for Science." Also speaking will be Donald Boesch, President of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental and Estuarine Studies. His speech is entitled "Restoring the Chesapeake Bay Ecosystem: A Challenge for Science and Society."
More meeting information, including symposia schedules, abstracts, and field trips, is available on the ESA Homepage at http://www.sdsc.edu/~ESA.
Newsroom Operation
Members of the press are exempt from registration fees and are free to attend all meeting sessions. A staffed press room, including copier, fax, computer, printer, telephone, and area for interviews, will be available. Please contact Gabriel Paal or Nadine Lymn for more information or to register.
The Ecological Society of America (ESA) is a scientific, non-profit, 7,800-member organization founded in 1915. Through ESA reports, journals, membership research, and expert testimony to Congress, ESA seeks to promote the responsible application of ecological data and principles to the solution of environmental problems. ESA publishes four scientific, peer-reviewed journals: Ecology, Ecological Applications, Ecological Monographs, and Conservation Ecology. Information about the Society and its activities is published in the Society's bi-monthly newsletter, NewSource, and in the quarterly Bulletin.
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in: Television stations in Texas, ABC Affiliates, Channel 8,
Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
Former DuMont Affiliates
Former Paramount Affiliates
Former NBC Affiliates
Tegna, Inc.
ABC Texas
Disney/ABC
AccuWeather Affiliates
Justice Network Affiliates
Quest Affiliates
Former Live Well Network Affiliates
Former Movies! Affiliates
Twist Affiliates
True Crime Network Affiliates
Shop LC Affiliates
WFAA
WFAA 8 (general)
News 8 (newscast)
The Spirit of Texas
We Are WFAA
Channel Number
Subchannels
8.1: ABC
8.2: Weather/Local
8.3: True Crime Network (O&O)
8.4: Quest (O&O)
8.5: Shop LC
Call Letter Meaning(s)
Working For All Alike
Former Affiliation
DuMont (1949–1950)
NBC (1950–1957)
Paramount (1949)
8 (VHF, 1949–2009)
Former Call Letters
KBTV (1949–1950)
Former Owner
Lacy-Potter Television Broadcasting
KMPX-DT 29.3 (30.3 UHF)
WFAA, virtual and VHF digital channel 8, is an ABC-affiliated television station licensed to Dallas, Texas, United States and serving the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex. The station is owned by Tegna Inc. WFAA maintains business offices and secondary studio facilities at the WFAA Communications Center Studios on Young Street in downtown Dallas (next to the offices of its former sister newspaper under the ownership of former parent company Belo, The Dallas Morning News), and operates a primary studio facility, which is used for the production of WFAA's newscasts and also houses certain other business operations handled by the station, in the Victory Park neighborhood (near Olive and Houston Streets, next to the American Airlines Center) in central Dallas. The station's transmitter is located south of Belt Line Road in Cedar Hill.
WFAA is the largest ABC-affiliated station by market size that is not owned and operated by the network through its ABC Owned Television Stations subsidiary, and the largest affiliate of any of the "Big Four" television networks (ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox) that is not owned by that respective network. It is also one of only two television stations in the Dallas–Fort Worth market (along with CW affiliate KDAF (channel 33), which is owned by Tribune Broadcasting) that is not owned by the corporate parent of its affiliated network.
1.1 Early history
1.2 Belo ownership and ABC affiliation
1.3 Gannett/Tegna ownership
1.4 Gallery
Early history[]
The initial application for the television station was filed on October 23, 1944, when local businessman Karl Hoblitzelle, owner of movie theater chain Interstate Circuit Theatres, applied with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to obtain a construction permit and license to operate a television station on VHF channel 8; it was the first such license application for a television station in the Southern United States. Hoblitzelle planned to operate the station out of the Republic Bank building in downtown Dallas, and even conducted a closed-circuit television broadcast of the opening of one of his properties, the Wilshire Theatre. Texas oil magnate Tom Potter filed a separate application for the Channel 8 license and was ultimately awarded the permit over Hoblitzelle.
The station first signed on the air at 8:00 p.m. on September 17, 1949 as KBTV, with a fifteen-minute ceremony inaugurating the launch of Channel 8 as its first broadcast; KBTV broadcast for one hour that evening, with the remainder of its initial schedule consisting of its first locally produced program, the variety series Dallas in Wonderland. Potter founded and operated the station through the Lacy-Potter TV Broadcasting Company, which he partially controlled. It was the third television station to sign on in Texas (behind WBAP-TV (channel 5, now KXAS-TV) in nearby Fort Worth, which signed on almost one year earlier on September 29, 1948; and KLEE-TV (now KPRC-TV) in Houston, which debuted on January 1, 1949), the second station in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, and the first to be licensed to Dallas. The station originally operated from studio facilities located at Harry Hines Boulevard and Wolf Street, north of downtown Dallas.
When the station commenced its full schedule on September 18, KBTV had broadcast for only four hours of programming per day. It originally operated as a primary affiliate of the DuMont Television Network and a secondary affiliate of the short-lived Paramount Television Network; under the arrangement, through an agreement between Lacy-Potter and Paramount Pictures, the station agreed to air 4.75 hours of Paramount Television's programming each week during 1949. KBTV, NBC affiliate WBAP-TV and CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (channel 4, now Fox owned-and-operated station KDFW) – the latter of which was also licensed to Dallas and signed on three months later on December 3 – would be the only television stations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to sign on for the next six years as the FCC had instituted a freeze on new applications for television station licenses in November 1948, a moratorium that would last for four years.
Belo ownership and ABC affiliation[]
Lacy-Potter Television Broadcasting lost $128,020 in net revenue during its four-month stewardship of KBTV, leading Tom Potter to make the decision to put the station up for sale. The A.H. Belo Corporation, owner of The Dallas Morning News, had attempted to launch a new television station in Dallas two years earlier, when it applied for a construction permit to build transmitter and broadcasting facilities for a proposed station that would have transmitted on VHF channel 12. The FCC rejected Belo's application and, following the issuance of the Sixth Report and Order in 1952, eventually chose to reassign the Channel 12 allocation to Waco (after the agency assigned that same channel to Ardmore, Oklahoma, where it would be licensed to KXII, the FCC would eventually move the VHF channel 12 allocation from Waco to Abilene, which became home to present-day ABC affiliate KTXS-TV). Complicating matters, the agency's moratorium on new license applications, which the FCC instituted to sort out the backlog of prospective applicants that already filed to build such operations, left Belo with the sole recourse of acquiring a television station that was already on the air if it wanted to own one in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
In January 1950, Belo purchased KBTV from Lacy-Potter for $575,000; the sale received FCC approval on March 13, 1950, with Belo formally assuming control of Channel 8 on March 17. The station was the first television property to be owned by the Dallas-based company, and also served as the flagship station of its broadcasting division until Belo merged with the Gannett Company in 2013. Four days later on March 21, Belo changed the station's call letters to WFAA-TV to match those of its new radio partner WFAA (570 AM, now KLIF). The WFAA calls reportedly stood for "Working For All Alike," although the radio station later billed itself as the "World's Finest Air Attraction" (the KBTV call letters were later used from 1953 to 1984 by what is now sister station KUSA in Denver, and since 1999 are used by a Fox-affiliated television station in Beaumont). WFAA is one of a relatively limited number of broadcast television stations located west of the Mississippi River whose call letters begin with a "W"; the FCC normally assigns call signs prefixed with a "K" to television and radio stations with cities of license located west of the river and broadcast call signs prefixed with a "W" to stations located east of the river. The anomaly in the case of the WFAA television and radio stations is due to the fact the policy predates the launch of the former, as Dallas was originally located east of the original "K"/"W" border distinction defined by the FCC.
In 1950, WFAA switched its primary affiliation to NBC, and also affiliated with ABC on a secondary basis. DuMont shut down in 1955, amid various issues that arose from its relations with Paramount that hamstrung it from expansion. Although it had been apparent from the start that Dallas and Fort Worth (which Arbitron originally designated as separate media markets) were going to be collapsed into a single television market due to their close proximity, Fort Worth Star-Telegram owner Amon G. Carter—who founded WBAP-TV through his company, Carter Publications—did not care whether residents in Dallas could view that station; WFAA affiliated with NBC under a time share arrangement with WBAP-TV to expand coverage of the network's programming to areas of central and eastern Dallas County that only received rimshot coverage of the Channel 5 signal.
After ownership of Carter Publications transferred to his familial heirs after Carter suffered a fatal heart attack two years before, in early 1957, NBC threatened to strip WBAP-TV of its affiliation if it did not agree to move its transmitter eastward to reach the entire Dallas area. Belo had attempted to get an exclusive NBC affiliation first, and approached the network with an offer to make WFAA its exclusive affiliate for the entire market. The network also approached the Roosevelt family-owned Texas State Network about affiliating with independent station KFJZ-TV (channel 11, now CBS owned-and-operated station KTVT), which had earlier moved its transmitter to the antenna farm in Cedar Hill. Carter's heirs—who initially did not want to move the transmitter closer to Dallas, in their aim to continue Carter's legacy of civic boosterism for Fort Worth—eventually agreed to NBC's demands that it move WBAP-TV's transmitter facilities to Cedar Hill, installing a transmitter antenna on a 1,500-foot (457 m) candelabra tower that was already shared by WFAA and KRLD-TV, and operate it at a higher effective radiated power strong enough to adequately cover Dallas. WFAA lost its NBC affiliation on September 1, 1957, as the network had awarded WBAP-TV the exclusive affiliation for the Dallas-Fort Worth market as a byproduct of the transmitter relocation and signal boost; this left Channel 8 as an exclusive affiliate of ABC.
Channel 8 became known for its heavy schedule of local programs during the period from the 1950s through the 1980s. The most popular was a show aimed at younger audiences; Jerry Haynes hosted a local children's program on the station on-and-off from 1961 to 1996. Originally debuting in March 1961 as Mr. Peppermint, Haynes (who donned a red- and white-striped jacket and straw hat in his portrayal of the titular character, accompanied by a candy-striped cane) starred alongside a variety of puppet characters (performed by Vern Dailey) and presented various segments from educational content to cartoon shorts; five years after ending its original nine-year run on WFAA in 1970, the program was revived as the half-hour magazine-style educational series Peppermint Place in 1975, running for 21 additional years—expanding into syndication for its final seven—until the program ended its collective 30-year run in July 1996. Other notable WFAA local productions included the music series The Group And Chapman and its progenitor Sump'n Else (both of which were hosted by Ralph Baker Jr. and Ron Chapman), Dallas Bandstand (also hosted by Haynes), lifestyle and fashion talk program The Julie Bennell Show (hosted by Dallas Morning News food editor Julie Bennell), the viewer Q&A series Let Me Speak to the Manager (originally titled Ask the Manager and later named Inside Television for the final four years of its run, co-hosted by Belo vice president Myron "Mike" Shapiro), and local versions of the Dialing for Dollars and PM Magazine franchises. Channel 8 also served as the original Dallas-Fort Worth home of the magazine series Texas Country Reporter, after host Bob Phillips, who originated it on KDFW in September 1972 as the locally produced 4 Country Reporter, sold the series into regional syndication (airing on WFAA under the title 8 Country Reporter) in 1986.
In 1958, WFAA became the first television station in the market to use a videotape recorder for broadcasting purposes; the station would gradually shift much of its locally produced programming from a live to a pre-recorded format, outside of newscasts, sports and special events, and eventually became one of the first television stations in the U.S. to convert its news footage to videotape in the 1970s. During the 1958–59 television season, WFAA served as the taping location for Jack Wyatt's ABC true crime reality series, Confession, in which assorted criminals explained why they chose to reject the mores of society and turn to crime.
On April 2, 1961, the station's operations were relocated to the WFAA Communications Center Studios, a state-of-the-art broadcasting complex located at Young and Record Streets in downtown Dallas; the former studio facilities on Harry Hines Boulevard were subsequently purchased by North Texas Public Broadcasting for use as the broadcasting facilities for National Educational Television station KERA-TV (channel 13, now a PBS member station). The Communications Center complex housed three production studios, offices and sound recording studios for the WFAA radio stations as well as The Dallas Morning News' headquarters. The first live telecast to originate from the building was Young America Speaks, a 13-week intercollegiate debate tournament series (the first such program ever televised), which aired until June of that year. In 1974, Texas State Sen. Jim Wade filed a motion to the FCC, challenging Belo's renewal application for the Channel 8 license and strip it of rights to operate WFAA; Wade's efforts, in which he also attempted to convince the FCC to award the television station's license to him, would prove unsuccessful as the agency chose to approve renewal of the existing license owned by Belo.
Over time, Belo gradually expanded its television broadcasting unit. The company acquired its second television station in 1969, when it purchased KFDM-TV in Beaumont from Beaumont Broadcasting, later followed in 1980 by its purchase of WTVC in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Among its purchases in later years, Belo acquired the Corinthian Broadcasting subsidiary of Dun & Bradstreet in December 1983, adding six additional stations – including CBS affiliate KHOU in Houston – to its portfolio (forcing the respective sales of KFDM and WTVC to Freedom Communications, and of WISH-TV in Indianapolis and WANE-TV in Fort Wayne, Indiana to LIN Broadcasting, to comply with FCC ownership limits); and added ten additional stations through its 1997 merger acquisition of the Providence Journal Company. By 1999, when it purchased ABC affiliate KVUE in Austin from the Gannett Company, Belo owned television stations in Texas' four largest television markets (WFAA, KHOU, KVUE and CBS affiliate KENS in San Antonio).
In May 1984, WFAA unveiled one of the most successful station image campaigns in the United States with the launch of the "Spirit of Texas", which was created in commemoration of the forthcoming 1986 sesquicentennial of Texas' independence. The promotions that aired as part of the campaign focused on the region's cultural heritage, accompanied by an imaging theme written by James R. Kirk of TM Productions, who composed it as part of an associated music package that was used for the station's newscasts until 1991. All of the news themes that WFAA commissioned afterward had carried the TM Productions theme's seven-note musical signature (including the "WFAA 1992 News Theme" from 1992 to 1996; four packages composed by McKinney-based Stephen Arnold Music: "The Spirit" from 1996 to 2000, the "Custom WFAA-TV News Package" from 2000 to 2004, a variation of Arnold's "News Matrix" from 2004 to 2005 and "Evolution" from 2004 to 2007; and the 615 Music-composed "Propulsion" from 2006 to 2014). The "Spirit" image campaign and/or slogan was also adapted by some of its Belo-owned sister stations (such as KHOU in Houston, KIII in Corpus Christi, WVEC in Norfolk, WWL-TV in New Orleans and KXTV in Sacramento) and by television stations owned by other companies, sometimes in conjunction with its accompanying theme (KHOU used the original TM-composed theme from 1986 to 1989, with the themes it used until 2014 also incorporating the "Spirit" signature including the custom John Hegner-composed "American Spirit", which was used from 1994 to 2000). WFAA discontinued the signature after three decades on August 27, 2014, when it switched to Gari Media Group's standardized package for Gannett's stations, "This is Home" (the station's news graphics and imaging were also overhauled to match Gannett's mandated look at that time); however, the station continues to use its longtime "Spirit of Texas" slogan, which is still used sparingly in some on-air promotions.
On January 14, 1987, the Hill Tower transmitter facility in Cedar Hill (which was jointly owned by WFAA and KDFW) was struck by a Navy F-4 Phantom as it was performing training exercises while on approach to the Dallas Naval Air Station. The jet clipped several guy-wires; however, its two occupants had ejected themselves from the aircraft and parachuted to the ground before it crashed. The tower consortium between the two stations decided to have a new 1,400 feet (430 m)-tall tower constructed a 1⁄4 mile (0.40 km) southwest of the original facility, which was completed in 1989. The candelabra mast that encompassed the upper 281 feet (86 m) of the former tower, meanwhile, was dismantled (reducing its height to 1,240 feet (378 m)), with new transmitters installed to serve as auxiliary facilities for WFAA, KDFW and radio stations KJMZ (100.3 FM, now KJKK), KMEZ (107.5 FM, now KMVK), KQZY (105.3 FM, now KRLD-FM), KKDA-FM (104.5) and KMGC (102.9 FM, now KDMX).
In April 1998, when KTEN (which had been affiliated with ABC on a part-time basis since its sign-on in 1956) disaffiliated from the network, WFAA began serving as a default ABC station for areas near and south of the Red River within the adjacent Sherman-Ada market—including Gainesville, and the southern Oklahoma cities of Ardmore, Durant and Hugo—through its existing availability on most cable providers in the region (KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City served as the primary default affiliate for the northern counties of the DMA in south-central Oklahoma). However, residents in extreme North Texas could view most ABC programs that were pre-empted by KTEN via WFAA for several years beforehand, particularly after the former switched to a primary NBC affiliation in 1986 (steadily reducing ABC-provided content on its schedule to select daytime and prime time programs by 1994, when it added an additional primary affiliation with Fox). The market would regain an ABC station of its own when KTEN launched a digital subchannel affiliated with the network on May 1, 2010.[7] Despite this, WFAA remains available on some cable providers in the southern half of the market; Cable One, however, removed the station from its Sherman and Denison systems on February 26, 2015, due to a clause in its retransmission agreement with KTEN that precluded it from carrying any other ABC stations from nearby markets.
On January 1, 1999, Belo launched Texas Cable News (TXCN), a statewide cable news channel that initially featured rolling news, weather and sports content, as well as public affairs, sports-talk and entertainment news programs, utilizing staff and resources from WFAA and sister stations KVUE, KHOU and KENS, and The Dallas Morning News. TXCN switched to a format primarily consisting of repackaged newscasts featuring segments seen on each of Belo's Texas-based stations, and in-house weather segments on January 1, 2005, citing limited cable distribution in Texas' largest television markets for the format change that resulted in the layoffs of 45 of the channel's employees. Following its acquisition of Belo, Gannett shut down Texas Cable News on May 1, 2015.
On July 20, 2005, Belo announced that it had reached an agreement with real estate developer Hillwood Capital to build a secondary studio facility in the eastern tower of the Plaza Towers complex then under construction in the Victory Park development at the corner of Olive and Houston Streets (adjacent to the American Airlines Center). The 5,000-square-foot (465 m2) facility, which opened in January 2007, incorporates a street-level studio where most of the station's news programming (with the exception of the 10:00 p.m. newscast) and the local talk show Good Morning Texas is produced, and houses news production staff and engineering operations; initially, the building also housed certain operations run by Belo's other Dallas-based properties, including its publishing division. The WFAA Communications Center continues to house the station's newsroom and most other business operations (including its master control, traffic, advertising and programming departments).
On October 1, 2007, Belo announced plans to split off its broadcasting and newspaper interests into two independent companies. WFAA would remain with the broadcasting entity, which retained the Belo Corporation name and was structured as the legal successor to the previous company, while the newspaper division (which in addition to The Dallas Morning News, included among other publications Al Día, Neighborsgo and Quick) was spun off into the similarly named, shareholder-held entity A. H. Belo Corporation (the name used by the original company from 1865 to 2001). The split – which was completed on February 8, 2008 – ended the joint ownership of WFAA television and The News after 59 years, becoming the last of the three newspaper/television broadcasting combinations in the Dallas–Fort Worth market to be separated into different companies (KXAS-TV was co-owned with the Star-Telegram from September 1948 until Carter Publications sold the former two properties and radio stations WBAP (820 AM) and KSCS (96.3 FM) to separate companies in 1974, while KDFW was co-owned with the Dallas Times-Herald—which ended publication after Belo acquired the newspaper in December 1991—from December 1949 until the Times Mirror Company sold the latter to the MediaNews Group in 1986). However, WFAA and The News continued to maintain a news content partnership through the end of 2013, at which time the newspaper entered into a collaborative agreement with KXAS-TV.
Gannett/Tegna ownership[]
On June 13, 2013, the Gannett Company announced that it would acquire Belo for $1.5 billion (the purchase price would increase to $2.2 billion by the merger's completion). The deal was granted FCC approval on December 20, and was finalized on December 23. Through the merger with Gannett, WFAA became the company's largest television station by market size (supplanting CBS-affiliated sister station WUSA-TV in Washington, D.C., which has been owned by the company since 1986); it also marked channel 8's first ownership change in 63 years. Additionally in July 2014, WFAA gained new sister stations in nearby markets—including NBC affiliate KCEN-TV in Waco and its Bryan semi-satellite KAGS-LD, CBS affiliate KYTX in Tyler and Fox affiliates KXVA in Abilene and KIDY in San Angelo—through Gannett's purchase of six television stations owned by the Dallas-based London Broadcasting Company, which based its portfolio of broadcasting properties exclusively within Texas (independent station KTXD-TV (channel 47) in nearby Greenville was one of two stations that London exempted from the deal, along with MeTV affiliate KCEB in Tyler, although FCC ownership regulations did not play a factor in the case of KTXD and WFAA as the Dallas–Fort Worth market had enough full-power television stations to allow a fourth duopoly).
On August 5, 2014, Gannett announced that it would split its broadcast and print media properties into separate publicly traded companies. Once the corporate separation was finalized on June 29, 2015, WFAA became part of Tegna, which was structured as the legal successor of the old Gannett and assumed ownership of the original company's non-publishing assets (including the broadcasting unit and most of its digital media properties); the Gannett Company, meanwhile, was re-established as a new company absolved of all existing debt that retained its predecessor's newspapers (including the company's flagship publication, USA Today) and select digital assets not acquired by Tegna.
TV stations in Texas
KTRK, Houston
KSAT, San Antonio
KVUE, Austin
WFAA, Dallas–Fort Worth
KXXV/KRHD-CD, Waco/Bryan
KBMT, Beaumont
KVII, Amarillo
KAVU, Victoria
KAMC, Lubbock
KGNS-DT2, Laredo
KTXS, Sweetwater
KIII, Corpus Christi
KRGV, Weslaco
KMID, Odessa
KVIA, El Paso
TV stations in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas
KDTN 2 (Daystar)
KDFW 4 (FOX)
KXAS 5 (NBC)
WFAA 8 (ABC)
KTVT 11 (CBS)
KERA 13 (PBS)
KPFW-LD 18 (IND/Religious)
KBOP-LD 20 (Infomercial)
KTXA 21 (IND)
KNAV 22 (Hot TV)
KUVN 23 (UNI)
K25FW 25 (HSN)
KODF 26 (Hot TV)
KDFI 27 (MNTV)
KHPK 28 (SBN)
KMPX 29 (ESTRELLA)
KWDA-LD 30 (Rel)
K31GL 31 (SBN)
KDAF 33 (CW)
KJJM-LD 34 (HSN)
KVFW 38 (Infomercial)
KXTX 39 (TMD)
KLEG 44 (TVC)
KTXD 47 (STADIUM)
KSTR 49 (UNIMAS)
KHFD 51 (EICB)
KFWD 52 (SON)
KAZD 55 (MeTV)
KDTX 58 (TBN)
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Television stations in Texas
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: SWIG Java - Wrapping unsigned char[] in byte[] I want to wrap a struct containing a fixed size array of unsigned char to byte[] in Java. My interface file currently looks like this:
%module example
%include "arrays_java.i"

struct myStruct
{
   unsigned char data[1024];
   int len;
};

The java proxies created contain get and set methods which take and return a short[].
Is there a way and if yes, what is the easiest way I can force SWIG to generate java proxies using byte[] instead of short[]?
I don't want to change the struct in any way. This is just a simplified example of a very large interface I have to wrap that I cannot change.
I am aware of the fact that byte in java is signed and doesn't cover the range of unsigned char in C, but for passing data around it is much more convenient than dealing with short[] or the wrapper created using array_class defined in carrays.i which eventually offers getItem and setItem methods that in turn take or return short.
So my question is just about if I can force swig somehow (maybe with some typemap) to treat unsigned char data[1024] like char[1024] in that it maps to a byte[] in java.

A: We can force SWIG to treat your unsigned char arrays as signed char arrays for the purpose of SWIG wrapping only using %apply. For example using:
%module example
%include "arrays_java.i"

%apply signed char[ANY] { unsigned char[ANY] };

struct myStruct
{
   unsigned char data[1024];
   int len;
};

Will force this to happen for all unsigned char arrays of any (known) size. (Think of %apply as typemap copy and paste)
You could also write:
%apply signed char[ANY] { unsigned char data[ANY] };

Or:
%apply signed char[ANY] { unsigned char data[1024] };

which would only apply to arrays of type unsigned char of any size, or size 1024 respectively.

As a handy tip: I figured out exactly which typemaps I wanted to match on for the %apply by calling SWIG with the '-debug-tmsearch' flag which showed originally:
....
test.i:8: Searching for a suitable 'jni' typemap for: unsigned char data[1024]
  Looking for: unsigned char data[1024]
  Looking for: unsigned char [1024]
  Looking for: unsigned char data[ANY]
  Looking for: unsigned char [ANY]
  Using: %typemap(jni) unsigned char [ANY]
....

which shows you what typemaps will apply in what order of precedence for every typemap used by your interface.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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After a great night's sleep in our Jerusalem hotel and great breakfast buffet we were off bright and early to the Mount of Olives where where Jesus entered Jerusalem along the Palm Sunday Road and where he spent a lot time. Here Jesus taught his disciples how to pray the Our Father- the Lord's Prayer, wept over the future destruction of Jerusalem, was arrested at Gethsemane after the Last Supper, and the place of his Ascension.
From our hotel we drove along the Mount of Olives ridge, stopping first at the Carmelite church of Pater Noster – into an underground cave, we remembered Jesus' teaching the Lord's Prayer- Our Father – in this intimate place and read the Scriptures and viewed the Lord's Prayer in Hebrew and Aramaic and the other languages of the world. Zack Shavin, our guide, explained that the Hebrew for prayer comes from a root meaning essence or essential. In praying we ask God to reveal to us our real purpose in this life – what gift has been given us to serve a greater purpose. Prayer is not so much a list of requests from God, but rather a sincere desire to know what God wants from us. But we need to be listening!
We then gathered outside the grotto and remembered the Ascension of Jesus and read the story from Acts. We remembered the painful confusion of that experience – and yet the great act of trust Jesus has in us – "look not heavenward" — get on with it! Jesus had given us the keys to God's reign, he had announced and embraced the Reign of God. It was after the Ascension that the Holy Spirit came down on Pentecost.
Zack led us down the Mount of Olives following the Palm Sunday Road in the footsteps of Jesus' Triumphal Entry into the Holy City. There was a great view from the overlook and a short way down to the tear-drop church of Dominus Flevit, where we remembered the story of Jesus weeping over this city – Betty proclaimed the story – inside the altar had Jesus as a Mother Hen. From the overlook we could see the Temple Mount and the city walls – this messianic city and mountain of the end of days! Fr. Bob challenged us to look at the walls of our hearts Jesus might be weeping over as we enter this phase of our pilgrimage. There was a powerful feeling of being on the holy mountain where Jesus spent many nights camping.
Zack oriented us to the different areas of the Holy City – then continued our Palm Sunday Road walk down the Mount of Olives passing Gethsemane where Jesus prayed alone and was arrested by the Roman soldiers after the Last Supper.
We drove around the old walled city, looking back at the messianic Mount of Olives. We stopped at the Dung Gate and then went to the Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall to pray – a 2000 year old remnant from the Temple! Zack Shavin explained that the name Western Wall if because it is part of the western retainer wall around Mount Moriah that helped support the massive 1500′ X 900′ Temple Mount platform that King Herod built over Mount Moriah. There is also a southern, northern, and eastern retainer wall. The name Wailing Wall is from the Jewish tradition to come to the Wall to lament the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem by Titus the Roman in the year 70 A.C. Jewish people traditionally come to this spot because it is closest to where the Holy of Holies was. Today the golden dome Mosque of Omar or Dome of the Rock stands over the spot where the Temple stood and only Moslems are allowed to pray there.
On to Ein Karem- hometown of John the Baptist – a suburb of Jerusalem today. We entered the village – the skies were sunny – and walked to the Church of John the Baptist commemorating the birth place of John the Baptist. Zack explained about Zachariah and his job as a priest in the Temple; about the route Zachariah would walk through the Judean hills to his Temple duties in Jerusalem. It would take about 1.5 hours to cover the distance.
Zack also explained that all of the Jewish priests are direct descendants from Aaron, brother of Moses. Anyone can study to be a rabbi but a Jew can only be born a priest. In Hebrew the word for priest is Cohen or Kohen and anyone carrying that family name today is from the priestly line. Today, the role of the Jewish priesthood is to bless the congregation with the biblical Priestly Benediction during prayer services.
The Bible says that Zachariah was offering in the Temple when John the Baptist was born. Zack explained that it was considered to be the preferred offering in the Temple and that a priest could only have the privilege of making the offering once in a lifetime. It was therefore a sign to Zachariah that he was going to father a very special child- just as John the Baptist turned out to be. He accordingly named him John because God had put it in his heart that John's life was to be dedicated to teaching and bringing the message of God's grace to his people. Zack added that Hebrew names have special meanings and reflect the special nature of the newborn child. Parents often wait for a sign from heaven – like Zachariah did – before giving the name.
We then climbed the western hill in Ein Karem to the Church of Visitation passing the Spring of Mary. Zack explained that Ein Karem means "spring of the vineyard" -sign of God's blessing. At the top of the hill is the Church of the Visitation built over the home of Zechariah and Elizabeth, and where Mary came to visit her cousin. We proclaimed the readings of Hannah & Samuel and the Luke story of the Visitation. We were near the Tomb of Samuel and listened to Hannah's (another old, sterile woman) prayer which is reflected in the Magnificat, Mary's Song or Canticle, echoing Isaiah's messianic call. Zack explained that Zechariah means "God remembering"; Elizabeth is "fullness" echoing the covenant oath, and John means "God showing favor – grace". We reflected on the story – Mary as the new Ark of the Covenant, proclaiming a new presence of God to sterile Israel (Elizabeth), whose very womb leapt with the mercy and compassion of God – a new exodus, creating a new people with a new covenant. When have our hearts leapt for the presence of God in each other?
We continued towards Bethlehem, Zack Shavin explained the ancient Patriarch's Road across the top of the mountains. Zack talked about Rachel's Tomb and then pointed out Herod's Tomb. Efram our Christian host, escorted us and prayed the Our Father in the original Aramaic. We first went to Shepherds Field- the story of Ruth and Boaz – faithfulness, gleaning the fields – great grand-mother of King David. We did some shopping – mainly for olive wood while Zack arranged a traditional Passover Seder meal – both Zach and Fr. Bob explained different elements and symbols of this meal of freedom. We ate lamb and chicken – reflecting on Passover and Eucharist – Jesus' Last Supper.
Bernice proclaimed the Word of God – we reflected on the Lukan story of Jesus' birth – the great symbolism of this House of Bread – Christmas carols – "O Come let us adore him!" The sword of cynicism can kill the innocence in us – the awesome mystery of a God Who gives Himself to us and becomes one of us – powerful and difficult to explain. Leaving we discussed how this is where Jerome translated the Greek Septuagint into the Vulgate, Latin, the common language of people.
Zack explained more about the history of this church and place – we had no wait to go downstairs into the Grotto of the Nativity to reverence the traditional silver star marking where Jesus was born – there was no one else there – wow! The chapel of the Manger nearby – time for reflection on the mystery of God's love – then upstairs in the 6th century Byzantine Church, the oldest in the Holy Land – we saw the ancient mosaics – it was peaceful and prayerful in Bethlehem. We returned to our hotel for dinner- some went over to downtown Jerusalem – Ben Yehuda street at night – we had celebrated Christmas – the self-giving of our God in Jesus, as he became one of us!
Have you enjoyed reading this Holy Land Pilgrimage Journal Day 7 about the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Ein Karem? Would you like to personally experience Israel and the Holy Land? Contact Zack Shavin, veteran guide & biblical archaeologist at Land of Israel Tours and get started planning today!


Unworn 2008 model Rolex Day-Date with original box and all original papers. Yellow gold case and bracelet, champagne dial, diamond bezel and diamond indices. Very rare to find a 10 year old model with all box and papers that is unworn. Purchased in 2008 in San Francisco as a gift from one foreign diplomat to another. Held since purchase and now offering for sale.


Hey! It's about that time when you'll probably be seeing more food photography from me, since the family and I will be cooking up a storm in the coming weeks.
Today I'm sharing one of my favorite super easy cookie recipes that I discovered several years ago. It's perfect if you're lazy or need something quick – like I did. I've got a Christmas party this weekend, so I made burst cookies in advance today. I even frosted designs on them! Check out the recipe below.
1. Combine beaten egg with cake mix.
2. Add Cool Whip and mix well. Dough will be very sticky.
3. Scoop out dough (I used 2 spoons to ball it up) and roll around in powdered sugar, form into a ball.
4. Bake at 350F for 12 minutes.


This disc brings together two composers who were contemporaries, although of different generations: Philips was probably a pupil of Byrd for some time. The main thing they had in common was that they were both staunch Catholics at a time when England was dominated by Protestantism. They dealt with this situation differently. Byrd spent his entire life in his home country, whereas Philips moved to the continent. He first spent some years in Rome, and then worked in the southern Netherlands which were under Spanish rule. His years in Rome had considerable influence on his style of composing. There are strong traces of the Italian style of his time, for instance that of Luca Marenzio who was one of the leading composers of madrigals.
Byrd also wrote secular music, but no madrigals and certainly nothing on Italian texts. It was especially the genre of the consort song which is well represented in his oeuvre. This disc includes several specimens. Some were written for a specific occasion, such as Wretched Albinus which is connected to the death of the Earl of Essex. It is one of the pieces in which Byrd's religious and political position shines through. The interesting thing about this disc is that several of Byrd's motets are performed here with one voice and a consort of viols. This practice was not uncommon at the time and reflects the domestic use of religious music. It could well be closer to the way Byrd's religious music was performed in his own time than modern interpretations by, for instance, cathedral choirs. Byrd's sacred works were mostly performed in secret Catholic services, probably rather small venues, and possibly by only a few singers. There is also evidence for such performances in Byrd's oeuvre: in Adoramus te, Christe only one of the parts has a text. Atollite portas seems a little less suitable to this approach as it mainly consists of duets, meaning that here the voice is paired to an instrument.
Philips is represented with some of his best instrumental pieces. The Pavana which opens the programme was included in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and called "the first that Philips made". It is transcribed for viol consort here by Andrew Kerr following many examples from the composer's own time. It was very common to combine a pavan and a galliard; that is also the case here, but the galliard is thematically not related to the pavan. That is different with the Pavana & Galiarda Dolorosa which is remarkable for its harmonic progressions. One of the most popular forms of consort music was the fantasia, mostly called fancy. It seems that Philips never composed any fantasias. The two recorded here are in fact transcriptions of sections from an Italian madrigal. That comes to the fore in their lively rhythms. The programme includes two trios which are taken from a treatise published in Germany in 1615. They were included in that book to illustrate the then common theories about the characters of the different modes. Here they are performed as introductions to the respective motets which follow them. These bear the traces of the Italian influence in his oeuvre and include some madrigalisms, but they are more modest in this respect than some other motets he has written.
One interesting aspect of these performances is the use of a historical pronunciation. I use the indefinite article on purpose, because there was no single pronunciation at the time. I have heard recordings where it was different in some respects. Here it is not restricted to the pieces in English, but also to the Latin items. The opening of Haec dicit Dominus sounds very different from what we are used to. One could argue that this is probably less appropriate in Philips' motets as they were published in Antwerp. However, there is evidence that his music was performed back home, and that could justify this practice. Obviously the use of historical pronunciation is especially important in songs where words are supposed to rhyme and where they only do in historical pronunciation. However, it seems to me that it is of general importance as I can't see any reason why one should bother about historical instruments and ways of playing and singing and at the same time ignore the way words were pronounced.
This is just one aspect which makes this disc a real asset. The second is the different way motets are performed. We know most of them pretty well in recordings by choirs and vocal ensembles, but here we hear them differently. It not only sheds light on a lesser-known aspect of the performance practice of the decades around 1600, but also makes us listen to these works anew. The interpretations are pretty much ideal. Clare Wilkinson has the perfect voice for this repertoire. She sings without vibrato, in an almost instrumental way, and her voice blends perfectly with the viols. In this music the singer is not so much a soloist but rather one instrument in the ensemble, and that is exactly how Ms Wilkinson sings. The Rose Consort of Viols plays excellently; the two pairs of pavans and galliards are just two fine examples of their art.
All things considered, this disc deserves special attention and that justifies it to be named Recording of the Month.


This week's sale offered 38,549 bales, which was an increase on last week. However, as with all other sales in 2018-19, total volume was lagging when compared to the same sale last season. In the seven auctions held for the current selling season, the cumulative national total is 39,000 bales lower (down 12.5 percent) than for the same period in 2017-18.
The exchange rate gave overseas processors some assistance with their purchase cost when the local currency continued to trend lower against the U.S. dollar. Midway through the week, the AUD hit 71.50 U.S. cents, a two-year low, before staging a recovery to finish at 71.68 cents late on Thursday. Price wise in local terms, the market opened on a strong note and resumed its upward trajectory from last week. The first day recorded widespread increases, but the momentum could not be maintained, and prices eased back on Thursday to the tune of 20 to 30 Australian cents.
At the close, price variations were mixed with Melbourne showing 20 cent falls when compared to its unusual Friday sale, while Sydney recorded 20 cent gains when compared to the Thursday. Merino skirtings found good support and were mostly firm on the previous sale. The smallest national crossbred offering in three years had mixed results; firming in some areas and losing ground in others. Merino cardings were also reasonably limited, and the Merino Carding Indicators closed with only minor movements.
Next week just under 35,000 bales are expected nationally in three selling centers.


text:
Scientifically Informed Solidarity: Changing Anti-Immigrant Prejudice about Universal Access to Health
Input–Output Analysis of China's CO2 Emissions in 2017 Based on Data of 149 Sectors
Fu, J.
Chen, J.
A Green Transportation Planning Approach for Coal Heavy-Haul Railway System by Simultaneously Optimizing Energy Consumption and Capacity Utilization
Jianjun Fu
Junhua Chen
School of Traffic and Transportation, Beijing Jiaotong University, No.3 Shang Yuan Cun, Hai Dian District, Beijing 100044, China
Academic Editor: Tomio Miwa
Received: 27 February 2021 / Revised: 31 March 2021 / Accepted: 6 April 2021 / Published: 8 April 2021
Coal heavy-haul railway has been aiming at maximizing capacity utilization, but ignoring energy consumption for a long time. With the focus on green production, heavy-haul railways need transportation organization plans that can balance energy consumption and capacity utilization. Based on this, this paper proposes a data mining + optimization framework that uses train trajectory data to estimate train energy consumption and then uses a mixed integer programming model to simultaneously optimize plans from energy and capacity aspects. We use Gaussian distribution to describe features of energy consumption under different situations, and build a multi-dimensional cube to store these features to connect with the optimization model. In addition, a branch-and-bound algorithm is design to solve the optimization model. From the sensitivity analyses we can conclude that (1) shortening the departure interval from 13 min to 9 min will generate more energy consumption, about 3.6%; (2) combining short-form trains (50 units) with long-form trains (100 units) while increasing the carrying capacity will generate more energy consumption, about 5~14%; and (3) by controlling weights of the optimization model, capacity–energy-balanced plans can be obtained. The results can contribute to improving the sustainability of railways. View Full-Text
Keywords: coal heavy-haul railway; railway train trajectory data; energy consumption; capacity utilization; simultaneously optimizing coal heavy-haul railway; railway train trajectory data; energy consumption; capacity utilization; simultaneously optimizing
Fu, J.; Chen, J. A Green Transportation Planning Approach for Coal Heavy-Haul Railway System by Simultaneously Optimizing Energy Consumption and Capacity Utilization. Sustainability 2021, 13, 4173. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13084173
Fu J, Chen J. A Green Transportation Planning Approach for Coal Heavy-Haul Railway System by Simultaneously Optimizing Energy Consumption and Capacity Utilization. Sustainability. 2021; 13(8):4173. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13084173
Fu, Jianjun, and Junhua Chen. 2021. "A Green Transportation Planning Approach for Coal Heavy-Haul Railway System by Simultaneously Optimizing Energy Consumption and Capacity Utilization" Sustainability 13, no. 8: 4173. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13084173


This chapter discusses Southern Baptist women and domesticity, which became important during the 1950s. By the 1960s however, the women's movement challenged the idealized notions of family and demanded equality for women in the home and in the workplace. It looks at the relationships of the Southern Baptist women, which clearly reveal the complexities and contradictions of the identities of these women. It is important to note that despite the influence of patriarchy, southern culture is considered to be largely matriarchal.


text:
US Students Got Cars for Their Perseverance, While Chinese Student Got Nothing
Looks like presenting a new car to students for their perseverance is becoming a trend. How else can you explain these AMAZING acts of kindness? The Typical Student team loves telling about random acts of kindness towards students in need. Previously, we listed 7 HEARTWARMING Times Complete Strangers Helped Struggling Students. And, we're just about to tell you more!
Alabama Student Rewarded With a New Car for Walking 20 Miles to Work
Credit: Bellhops
Walter Carr, 20, a student from Homewood, Alabama got a new car from his new boss! How did that happen? It was the night just before Walter was going to start his new job, but unlucky for him, his car broke down and he had no time to take it to the mechanic. Someone would panic from the perspective of walking 20 miles to the job, but not Mr. Carr!
Instead of wasting his precious time, Walter set off walking in the middle of the night to ensure he would be just in time for starting his first day at work! After the CEO of the company learned about Walter's perseverance, he didn't hesitate to present Walter with his own car and establish a GoFundMe page for him which had raised around $8,500 (£6,500).
Student from Alabama Got an SUV and $11K for Walking to Graduation
Earlier, another student from Alabama, Corey Patrick, was given a brand new SUV for getting up at 4:30 AM every morning to catch a school bus! On his graduation day, Patrick was getting late for the ceremony, so he was walking to catch a bus dressed up in his graduation attire. It so happened that the bus driver secretly took pictures of Corey walking down the road and shared his story on Facebook.
Suddenly, a famous radio DJ, Rickey Smiley, learned about Corey Patrick's daily walking experience and decided to present a boy with a car! Want to know what happened next? Read more on the story in UNBELIEVABLE: Walking to School Got US Graduate an SUV and $11,000!
Chinese Student Takes a 4.5km Walk to School in -9°C
Source: Weibo
Speaking of perseverance, this Chinese boy took the internet by storm after his pictures had surfaced on January 10. 2018. As told by Channel NewsAsia, Wang Fuman, 8, lives 4.5km away from school has to walk to school for 1.5 hours DAILY! On the first day of his final exams, the Primary 3 boy in Yunnan, China arrived at school on foot nearly frozen. In the pictures taken by his teacher, one can see the frost coating his hair and eyebrows!
The school principal shared the boy's pictures on Weibo, a Chinese social media website, and users were astounded! The local newspaper interviewed the principal, Fu Heng, who said: "It was -9°C in the morning and it was the first day of the final exam. The temperature had dropped in the last half an hour, and as he lives pretty far from school by the time he got to class his hair was full of frost."
It's so sad that in modern day, kids have to walk kilometers and miles to school! Have you heard of any students who did the impossible to get to school?
21 UNBELIEVABLY Beautiful Chalkboard Designs Done by Students and Teachers
No Money No Honey: Chinese Student's University Enrolment Suspended Due To Father's Poor Social Credit Score
Sex Ed Works Pretty Well for Primary School Students and Here's the Proof
UNBELIEVABLE: Walking to School Got US Graduate an SUV and $11,000!
How Student Praises Hot Water in His Grad Speech and Becomes a Celebrity in China, See Viral Video
7 HEARTWARMING Times Complete Strangers Helped Struggling Students
Tyra Banks in Awe of This UNT Student's Trampoline Photoshoot, and Here's Why!
2018 BET Awards Nominees Unexpectedly Are Students: See the Humanitarian Heroes Shortlist
7 CRAZY Things Students Do When It's Too Hot


text:
C. S. Lewis book club
Reading and discussing 12 C.S. Lewis books in a year
About the book club
Post author By cslewisbookclub
Post date 13th Oct 2021
1 Comment on The end of the beginning
Photo by Min An on Pexels.com
So, we've finished our year of reading C.S. Lewis books and in my final blog I'll try to sum up something of what we've learnt.
But first, thanks to Christine, Julia, Karen, Lisa and Sandra for joining me as we met each month and discussed the latest book. Your insights and our discussions have been invaluable in opening up aspects of the books I hadn't noticed, and I have valued the discipline that meant because we were meeting, I had to finish the latest book!
If you've joined the Facebook group, I hope that if you have also joined us by reading some of the books and blogs, you have enjoyed the experience of delving into C.S. Lewis too.
We agreed at our final meeting that the book club came at the right time for us for various reasons. We entered the second and third lockdowns during the 12 months of the club, and we found it helpful that we had something to focus on and that because of Zoom we could still "meet" for our monthly discussions. In fact, in the end we never met in person, so the book club helped us cope with the restrictions of lockdown. For me, there was the strange coincidence that we read A Grief Observed just after my father died, and so I was able to engage with that book in a very personal way, particularly as my father's thought was so shaped by C.S. Lewis.
We also valued the fact that because of the book club we tackled books that we might not otherwise have tried. This was especially true of Lewis's more theological books, but also of That Hideous Strength. Those who didn't normally read science fiction tried it, although I'm not sure it made them any more interested in the genre – most felt it was one of the most difficult books.
Big themes emerged during the year; Lewis's idea of joy and of the longing for God that will never fully be satisfied until we meet Him after death; the reality that we all fall short of God's perfection, but that ultimately it doesn't matter, because He still forgives and accepts us for who we are; the wonder and miracle of nature and creation; the dangers of the daily temptations that can gradually separate us from God; the logic of faith. We found that Lewis was unrelenting in his honest portrayal of human nature, with all its flaws, but that he ultimately finds that there is always redemption.
We expected Lewis to be complex and high-minded and didn't always find him easy reading – sometimes we might feel "please just get to the point", but often also we were surprised by new insights. For me one of those was the new realisation that there are so many everyday miracles, such as how a cut heals. We were also surprised and pleased by how honest his writings are. He was very self-aware and this was refreshing as he is often put on a pedestal as one of the great writers of the 20th century, but in his books we see him being as remorselessly critical of his own behaviour as he is of others'.
There was also the pleasure of enjoying Lewis the storyteller and we particularly liked The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters where he used his vivid imagination to help illustrate theology. And of course, the Narnia books, which we all agreed at the final meeting were our favourites.
So what comes next? I am going to continue reading C.S. Lewis but perhaps not in such an intense way. I certainly have The Abolition of Man on the list, as when discussing That Hideous Strength in the Facebook Official C.S. Lewis Group a number of people recommended The Abolition of Man as setting out the ideas behind the novel. I also plan to read the first two books in the science fiction trilogy, and to have a look at Till We Have Faces.
Reading C.S. Lewis has helped me this year by reminding me of some key principles of my Christian faith. But it has also helped me through the sad reality of my father's death. As I wrote at the beginning of the year and in my tribute blog, Dad introduced me to C.S. Lewis and it feels as though the timing has been absolutely right that I have had C.S. Lewis to accompany me at the end of Dad's journey on earth.
Because reading his books again has reinforced for me the lesson I learned from Dad and Lewis as a child, that when all sorts of things, like this book club, come to an end, that is just the beginning of something else. And death is not the end. It is just the end of our chapter on earth.
So it seems fitting to finish this year of blogs about reading C.S. Lewis by quoting again from The Last Battle, the final Chronicle of Narnia.
"As [Aslan] spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page; now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."
Tags AGriefObserved, ChroniclesofNarnia, cslewisbookclub, endofthebeginning, ThatHideousStrength, TheAbolitionofMan, TheGreatDivorce, TheLastBattle, TheScrewtapeLetters, TillWeHaveFaces
Questions about The Four Loves
No Comments on Questions about The Four Loves
Photo by Monstera on Pexels.com
On Friday the book club met for our final meeting in our year of reading C.S. Lewis. We were discussing The Four Loves.
We started by remembering how Lewis defined "Need-love" and "Gift-love" at the beginning of the book and then moved on through the chapters. These are the questions we looked at:
What do you think about Need-love? When is it selfish?
Is it dangerous when instead of "God is love" we say "love is God"?
What do you think about Lewis's view of loving Nature, that it provides "a language of images" to help us understand God and things like glory or fear?
Was C.S. Lewis woke? (with reference to his views about love of one's country, and how we should make a "full confession of Christendom's specific contribution to the sum of human cruelty and treachery").
What do you think about Lewis's view that we can use affection as a weapon (eg a mother staying up late when her child goes out so the child can't really enjoy themselves). What examples do you have of affection being "weaponised"?
Do you relate to Lewis's idea that affection is about familiarity and we can feel it for people even when we have nothing in common?
Is there a difference between male and female friendship?
Can friendships lead to 'in-groups'? What are the dangers of that?
Talking about how people take sex very seriously, Lewis says "we have reached the stage at which nothing is more needed than a roar of old-fashioned laughter". Do you agree?
Do you agree that Eros must die or become a demon unless he obeys God?
Lewis writes "to love at all is to be vulnerable". Do you agree?
In the end the whole book points to Lewis's overarching idea that only God can help us to love others properly, and that we need to love Him first of all. He says "Perhaps, for many of us, all experience merely defines, so to speak, the shape of that gap where our love of God ought to be". What do you think the overall message of the book is?
As always, we had found the book thought-provoking and refreshing. We liked the examples Lewis described of how love can go wrong, and we agreed that he was pointing to God's love as the only way to make our flawed human loves better.
In my next blog I'll review the year and sum up what it has meant for the members of the book club and me.
Tags cslewisbookclub, loveasaweapon, menandwomensfriendship, TheFourLoves, wascslewiswoke
The ultimate Love
Post date 6th Oct 2021
No Comments on The ultimate Love
Photo by sergio omassi on Pexels.com
I've always found the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew chapter 25 uncomfortable. In this parable the sheep and goats are judged according to whether they have helped and cared for the marginalised, those who are hungry and thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick or in prison. In the parable Jesus tells the listeners that whenever they cared for one of these people, they were in fact caring for him, the king. It's uncomfortable because it's a reminder of how Jesus expects his followers to love others and how we may fall short.
In The Four Loves, Lewis discusses this parable and says that this kind of caring "apparently is Gift-love to God whether we know it or not".
We can often feel as though we somehow deserve God's love. As Lewis says "No sooner do we believe that God loves us than there is an impulse to believe that He does so, not because He is Love, but because we are intrinsically lovable."
Lewis is clear that actually, we are not. We are no more lovable than anyone else, including the marginalised people we are called to love. We are all equally loved by God, not because of who we are, but in spite of who we are.
And if we love other people as God wants us to, we do this because God helps us to do so. "Divine Gift-love in the man enables him to love what is not naturally lovable… criminals, enemies… the sulky, the superior and the sneering."
Lewis is pointing out the perfection of God's love and is also showing how when we love those who we might naturally have difficulty loving, we are somehow mirroring in a small way God's love. He has made it clear in the earlier chapters of the book that actually all our loves are imperfect or marred unless we allow God to help us love like He does.
In a chapter which at times seems quite complex, Lewis is pointing us to the ultimate Love.
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The vulnerability of love
Post date 3rd Oct 2021
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So we come to the final chapter in C.S. Lewis's book The Four Loves. It is called Charity and it is about God's love and how we may express it in our lives. Perhaps the most famous description of this kind of love in the Bible is in 1 Corinthians 13.
Lewis starts off by talking about how as he has demonstrated in previous chapters "The natural loves are not sufficient". He has shown how all of them go bad without God's help.
He discusses how until very recently, theologians often emphasised how it was very important that we did not love other people more than God.
Trying to define what this means, he looks at St. Augustine's view when he was heartbroken at the death of a friend, that this was what came of giving one's heart to anything but God.
But Lewis feels that St. Augustine was wrong in his analysis. The reason is that if we follow this to its logical conclusion, we will try to protect ourselves from loving anyone just in case we are heartbroken if we lose them, because that could show that we loved them more than God.
In fact, says Lewis, "to love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken". Moreover "I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God's will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness". Of course we can end up idolising the people we love, but Lewis feels that "The real question is, which [of God or another person] do you servie, or choose, or put first? To which claim does your will, in the last resort, yield?"
In other words, we can and should love other people – whilst remembering that ultimately our first allegiance is to God.
I remember a Simon and Garfunkel song that was popular when I was young. The singer is trying to protect himself from pain by saying that he is "a rock…an island" but then he admits "And a rock feels no pain. And an island never cries". He is protected from the pain of love, but the cost is high. Lewis does not recommend this.
If we avoid love because of fear, he says, and lock up our heart "it will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell".
Love makes us vulnerable.
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When love goes bad
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Moving on from his discussion of "Venus" in The Four Loves Lewis goes on to talk about Eros, or the state of being in love, as a whole.
As he often does in his books, he reminds us that we are animals as well as souls and that therefore while Eros is "a soaring passion" it is linked to "such mundane factors as weather, health, diet, circulation, and digestion". Moreover, "it is a continual demonstration of the truth that we are composite creatures, rational animals, akin on one side to angels, on the other to tom-cats".
It can feel quite uncomfortable to be compared to tom-cats, but Lewis continues with thoughts that are in some ways more uncomfortable, for he reminds us that even though romantic love is something people desire and aspire to, it is not always a good thing. Like other loves, it can be damaged by our selfishness and self-centredness, what Lewis would call sin.
He points out that "even when it becomes clear beyond all evasion that marriage with the Beloved cannot possibly lead to happiness… Eros never hesitates to say, 'Better this than parting. Better to be miserable with her than happy without her'" and I can think of lots of novels that deal with this very subject.
So "falling in love" may lead to foolish decisions about marriage and partnership and these may lead to unhappiness when people are mismatched, but it can also taken to extremes urge people to actual evil.
Because Eros is so all-consuming, Lewis argues, people caught up in its passions act in extreme ways, but this can lead to bad things as well as good things. "The love which leads to cruel and perjured unions, even to suicide-pacts and murder, is not likely to be wandering lust or idle sentiment. It may be Eros in all his splendour." Again, there are many novels and plays dealing with this darker side of Eros.
So as with the other loves Lewis has described so far, Eros is not wholly a positive love. In the hands of fallible people, Eros can lead to all sorts of misery. And even when it does not lead to the extremes of killing and cruelty, it can lead to disappointment.
The guard against this for Lewis is that as with other loves, people should submit their romantic love to God's expectations of how they behave towards others. He points out that after a while the strong feelings involved when people fall in love change. If people have "expected that mere feeling would do for them… all that was necessary" in their relationships they will be disappointed in the face of the difficulties of everyday life. Eros has given them a glimpse of what is possible, but now "we must do the works of Eros when Eros is not present…. And all good Christian lovers know that this programme, modest as it sounds will not be carried out except by humility, charity and divine grace… The god dies or becomes a demon unless he obeys God".
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Laughing at love
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Lewis devotes a chapter of The Four Loves to Eros. He says "By Eros I mean of course that state which we call 'being in love'; or, if you prefer, that kind of love which lovers are 'in'".
He calls the sexual element within this kind of love "Venus" and feels that the two are not the same thing. He thinks that Eros is about desiring a particular person, and that this may or may not include sexual desire – it usually does at some point but it is not a given. "In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give."
In a discussion of "Venus" talks about how the act of love is taken too seriously. He was writing in the 1950s, a time when Freud was very influential and when sex was weighted with all sorts of meanings in a way that is probably not the case now. "I believe we are all being encouraged to take Venus too seriously; at any rate, with the wrong kind of seriousness. All my life a ludicrous and portentous solemnisation of sex has been going on."
His view is that actually "We have reached the stage at which nothing is more needed than a roar of old-fashioned laughter". He talks about how lovers need to, and often can, laugh together about how ridiculous sex sometimes is.
I think he has a point about sometimes being able to laugh but I wonder whether our society has now moved so that sex is not taken seriously enough. Yes, there is plenty of advice about how to "do" sex, but we now hear a nervousness about the ubiquity of sexual images, particularly in online pornography, which adults feel is damaging young people's sexual responses.
Lewis himself does acknowledge that alongside the roars of laughter, sex "is serious… quadruply so. First, theologically, because this is the body's share in marriage which, by God's choice, is the mystical image of the union between God and Man. Secondly, as what I will venture to call a sub-Christian, or Pagan or natural sacrament, our human participation in, and exposition of, the natural forces of life and fertility – the marriage of Sky-Father and Earth-Mother. Thirdly, on the moral level, in view of the obligations involved and the incalculable momentousness of being a parent and ancestor. Finally it has (sometimes, not always) a great emotional seriousness in the minds of the participants".
Lewis actually seems to be taking it very seriously. His plea for people to laugh sometimes at sex sits alongside important discussion of the meaning sex has in all sorts of ways. In our society, when sex seems to be so often decoupled from any of this meaning, it seems to lead to unhappiness because sex is not taken seriously at all.
Tags cslewisbookclub, laughingatlove, TheFourLoves
In-groups
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I made one of my oldest friends when she came into my living-room for the first time and saw the row of Virago books and the Barbara Pym paperbacks. She knew immediately that we would be friends, because the bookshelves mirrored her own. Soon we found we also followed The Archers and even only recently we discovered that we also both like the books of Elizabeth Goudge, a largely forgotten author of last century.
Lewis writes about friendship in one of the chapters of The Four Loves. He says "The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, 'What? You too? I thought I was the only one'".
He rightly points out that "friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice".
I expect you've found this to be the case, and it is so restful when you know that your reaction to something, or your enthusiasm for something, will be mirrored in your friend's reaction, and you can enjoy discussing it together. It's even better when there is a group of you all with similar views or enthusiasms.
It can be hard to imagine that there can be anything bad about this kind of relationship. But as usual, Lewis brings us helpful insights.
He talks about how when two or more people come together in a joint enthusiasm, they can feel about their group of friends that they are "lucky beyond desert to be in this company. Especially when the group is together each bringing out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others".
The danger Lewis sees in this is that groups can become deaf to the opinion of the outer world. "Every real Friendship is a sort of secession, even a rebellion… of good men against the badness of society or of bad men against its goodness". In this description I can see some of the discussions I've had with like-minded people about Brexit.
This deafness to other opinions can lead to a "wholesale deafness which is arrogant and inhuman".
In other words, we in our friendship group can come to believe that only we are right and that those who disagree with us are wrong. Friendship is bound to be exclusive in the sense that we are sharing enthusiasm and opinions which others may not hold, but Lewis points us that "from the innocent and necessary act of excluding to the spirit of exclusiveness is an easy step; and thence to the degrading pleasure of exclusiveness".
We can become an in-group that looks down on and discounts those outside the group.
Nowadays when views seem to become polarised very easily, and when the reaction of "in-groups" to those who disagree with them can be to "cancel" them, Lewis's warning seems very timely.
He says "Pride [is] the danger to which Friendships are naturally liable". He is making the valid point that if we find friends who agree with our point of view, and we only associate with them, after a while we are in danger of looking down on and perhaps actively opposing all those who disagree with us.
He reminds us that friendship is not about patting ourselves on the back when we find someone who agrees with us and assuming that therefore we are right. "Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others".
He seems to be saying that when we make good friends that should be the beginning of our recognising the beauty of humanity in everyone, not an excuse to exclude people.
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After his introductory chapters to The Four Loves, Lewis embarks on a chapter for each of the four loves, and the first he defines as Affection, translated by the Greek word storge.
He describes Affection in an affectionate way. "It lives with simple, un-dress, private things; soft slippers, old clothes, old jokes, the thump of a sleepy dog's tail on the kitchen floor, the sound of a sewing-machine."
Lewis thinks that we can feel affection for people even when we don't have a particular fellow-feeling with them, and that that affection often arises simply from the fact that they have been around for a long time. We are comfortable with them. And of course we are often most comfortable with our relatives, who have been in our lives for a long time, and with old friends.
But as always with Lewis, he also sounds a note of caution. We can't assume that affection is always benign. Sometimes, people can use their affection as a weapon. He talks about the "maternal vampire who can never be caressed or obeyed enough". He sees that sometimes people can use affection as an excuse for controlling people, for example by insisting on staying up late until they get in from a night out, thus making the night out a cause for guilt rather than pleasure as the mother waits up and they find the "frail, pale, weary face awaiting you, like a silent accusation".
He also talks about how people can cite affection as a reason to be rude to the people they love. They take liberties because they say that because they are close to members of their family, this gives them the right to "say anything". So, in Lewis's view a person can then use this opportunity to say anything "spitefully in obedience to his resentments; or ruthlessly in obedience to his egoism, or at best stupidly, lacking in art". The person "knows Affection takes liberties. He is taking liberties. Therefore (he concludes) he is being affectionate".
We can probably all think of examples where this kind of "banter" among families or close friends can actually be very hurtful.
In talking about affection in this way, Lewis is laying bare how even the most apparently simple form of love can be twisted and distorted. He is forcing us to examine honestly our own dealings with other people and to consider whether we sometimes excuse ourselves making hurtful comments, taking liberties because we're allowed to with close family and friends.
I'm struck by this because often when reading magazine articles about relationships I find that the emphasis is on me thinking about my own needs and what I deserve, rather than the impact my behaviour might have on other people. I have almost got into the habit of only seeing my interactions with others from the point of view of their effect on me.
Once again, Lewis is challenging.
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Woke!
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After talking about love of nature in The Four Loves, Lewis touches on love for one's country.
Here I was very interested to realise that he expresses views which are quite "woke" – something which was unexpected given that he was writing around 70 years ago, and that he can often appear sexist and write in a way that some people would regard as racist.
He is talking about the dangers of patriotism. This is at a time when Britain had only recently divested itself of much of the British empire.
I think I would have expected him to endorse the patriotism that says that one's country is better than other countries, particularly because this seems to have been a common view – the idea of a "land of hope and glory, mother of the free".
However, his ideas are far more nuanced. He says that "a man's reasons for not wanting his country to be ruled by foreigners are very like his reasons for not wanting his house to be burned down; because he 'could not even begin' to enumerate all the things he would miss". This kind of feeling is perhaps behind the sorts of messages people were given to convince them to vote for Brexit – a feeling that somehow we were losing our "Britishness" into a faceless European bureaucracy.
But Lewis does not hold back when describing what was wrong with the British empire, seeming particularly distressed that a lot of what was done in the name of the Empire was also done in the name of Christianity.
"If ever the book which I am not going to write is written it must be the full confession by Christendom of Christendom's specific contribution to the sum of human cruelty and treachery. Large areas of 'the World' will not hear us till we have publicly disowned much of our past. Why should they? We have shouted the name of Christ and enacted the service of Moloch."
Disowning much of our past? The language may be old-fashioned, but Lewis's sentiments here are modern and woke.
Tags cslewisbookclub, landofhopeandglory, patriotism, TheFourLoves
Loving nature
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Lewis has talked about nature in some of his other books that we have read this year. In Miracles, for example, he talks about how nature points us towards the likelihood of the existence of God. He loves nature and describes the coming of spring lyrically in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Now, in the second chapter of The Four Loves, he talks about "likings and loves for the sub-human" and describes what love of nature is. He says that loving nature is about perceiving a "mood" or "spirit". It's not about focusing in detail on some element of botany or geology, rather "Nature-lovers want to receive as fully as possible whatever nature, at each particular time and place, is, so to speak, saying".
I guess he's talking about something like the experience that is called "forest bathing" in modern speak. Enjoying whatever is happening in nature in a forest or on the seashore or on a mountain, but without elevating it into a religion.
He thinks that "what nature-lovers… get from nature is an iconography, a language of images. I do not mean simply visual images; it is the 'moods' or 'spirits' themselves – the powerful expositions of terror, gloom, jocundity, cruelty, lust, innocence, purity – that are the images. In them each man can clothe his own belief".
Once people are experiencing these moods, Lewis feels that in the process nature can provide images that "give meaning to words like glory or fear".
In other words, I think he is saying that what we see in nature can give us an idea of feelings associated with God – the glory of a sunset can help us understand God's glory, or the fear we feel in the middle of a thunderstorm can help us understand fear of God.
But while nature can help us with imagery, Lewis cautions that nature does not actually teach us. He thinks that if we don't realise that "the love of nature is beginning to turn into a nature religion" and in his view this is wrong.
This is a subtle point but I find it helpful when thinking about the world and the renewed focus there is on our responsibility to nature in the light of climate change and plastics and other pollution. I can enjoy the wonders of nature but once again Lewis is reminding me to look beyond the created to the Creator.
Tags cslewisbookclub, Miracles, naturelovers, TheLiontheWitchandtheWardrobe
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text:
The Notwist
Webster Hall; New York, NY
By Doug Schrashun https://www.tinymixtapes.com//writer/doug+schrashun · October 30, 2008 2008-10-30T08:35:35-04:00
As irrelevant as the remaining Beatles members seem these days, Paul and Ringo can take consolation in the fact that the ideal rock 'n' roll career is still based on the mold they created: release some great disposable pop records, then move closer and closer towards more serious "mature" music with each successive record. This idea of artistic development is becoming increasingly less feasible by the day, but when a band manages to follow this path successfully, it still usually works. The Notwist are the prime German indie world example of a band that has followed this career arc, moving from throwaway quasi grunge metal beginnings, to sort of 90s indie rock, to sort of dance pop, to full-on electro acoustic pop rock maturity over the course of a decade plus.
Taking this arc as a model, and 2002's Neon Golden as the consensus choice for their artistic peak, this year's follow up, The Devil, You + Me, should either be the record where The Notwist test the limits of experimentation and produce an incomprehensible dud, the record where they get sentimental and show their age, or the record where they try to sound like they did on their previous record and lose their creative momentum. Happily, The Notwist avoid falling into the trap of the first category, but for good or ill, The Devil, You + Me can't avoid sounding like a safer, gentler version of Neon Golden.
In terms of a live show, it's much more difficult to say how a band like The Notwist "should" age. The Beatles were done with live performance by the time they got serious, so there's no model here. Good thing. The Notwist are an uncommonly great live band -- this show proved that, even when their "mature" recordings sound slightly muted or conservative, they bring out serious fire from them in a live setting. On record, their best songs get by on subtlety, lyrical delicacy, and intricate production. Live, their least subtle songs are their best, and the band's best efforts lose the details of a song in order to benefit the performance as a whole. Every boring indie rock band out there (and The Notwist, with The Devil, You + Me are hanging on the precipice here) should take note of this approach.
Here's an example of how this works: as many outstanding songs as Neon Golden contains, and as wonderfully as the band performs them live, it's always "This Room" that tears the roof off a show. The recorded version of the song thrives on its verses that build tension through electronic cacophony played over the fatalistic message, "We will never, will never leave this room," and give way to instrumental sections that are somehow just as tense and brooding. At Webster Hall, the instrumental sections became hugely cathartic passages, with singer/guitarist Markus Acher alternating between primal strumming of a single chord and utilizing his signature maneuver of guitar violence: smashing the strings into the pickups with his hand to produce a percussive, mechanical, and disquieting punctuation. And just when you thought they'd reached their peak of intensity, the band effortlessly pushed the dynamic from kill to obliterate, only to gracefully come back down and deliver another verse. It's a simple variation on the classic Pixies "soft-loud-soft" trick, but one that was masterfully played.
Thankfully, the band is able to pull similar tricks with much of its new material. Besides "Boneless," which lacked any real sense of purpose, all of the Devil, You + Me tracks in the set sounded perfectly at home alongside the more time-tested Neon Golden favorites. "Where In This World" and "Gravity," in particular, reached levels of noisy grace equaling "This Room" and "Pick Up the Phone."
As surprisingly good as the newer tracks were, the Neon Golden tracks were still the highlights. "Neon Golden" had a beautifully meditative quality to it, even when tech wiz Martin Gretschmann and drummer Andi Haberl took the opportunity offered by a freeform middle section to turn it into something akin to a Depeche Mode song. On "Pilot," the band delved into the dub tendencies that are only hinted at on the recorded version of the track and did so while somehow avoiding coming off as over-reaching central European dilettantes.
Age has certainly not slowed down The Notwist at all. Even though they concentrated on their more downbeat tracks as the set wore on, they should still be commended for indulging a very appreciative crowd with two encores, bringing the set time close to the two-hour mark. The appearance of quieter material was by no means a bad thing, and the softer ending to the show was arguably even more affecting than the show's louder, more frantic episodes. "Consequence," with which they opened their final encore, received possibly the warmest welcome from the crowd of any song in the set, underscoring the fact that, as good as The Notwist are at staging musical and lyrical tension, they are most appreciated when they can alleviate tension rather than create it. "Gone, Gone, Gone," "The Devil, You + Me," and "Sleep" were also as welcome in the set as anything else, and along with the Wii controllers Gretschmann used throughout the show to control the band's signature fuzzed-out loops, they lent a sense of levity to a night which could easily have become too dour or too serious.
"The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful." - John Cage