“Diane Watson's retirement inspires a look back - Los Angeles Times” plus 3 more |
- Diane Watson's retirement inspires a look back - Los Angeles Times
- Train fever spreads east to Wisconsin along I-94 - Minneapolis Star Tribune
- Eddie Robinson Museum opens at Grambling State - CBS Sports
- Travel books: From cruises to Cape Town - Seattle Times
Diane Watson's retirement inspires a look back - Los Angeles Times Posted: 13 Feb 2010 07:44 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | Los Angeles Times, 202 West 1st Street, Los Angeles, California, 90012 | Copyright 2010 Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
Train fever spreads east to Wisconsin along I-94 - Minneapolis Star Tribune Posted: 13 Feb 2010 07:44 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. Even Facebook fans are rallying behind a proposal to attract passenger rail service along Interstate 94 in west-central Wisconsin. A page called "Bring high-speed rail to Eau Claire" exceeded 2,500 entries Friday, many of them students and job commuters longing for public transit to the Twin Cities and Chicago. "I was expecting a couple of hundred if I was lucky, but I'm astounded by this," said Seth Hoffmeister, a 19-year-old freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point who started the page. "I think providing as many transportation choices as possible is the right thing to do." The passenger train frenzy, already in full swing in the metro area, won't stop at Minnesota's eastern border if Wisconsin can help it. Dozens of community leaders associated with the West Central Wisconsin Rail Coalition envision a commuter train someday connecting Eau Claire and Hudson with the Twin Cities. They also want a proposed fast train linking the Twin Cities with Chicago to run along the I-94 corridor. Scott Rogers, who co-chairs the coalition, said that I-94 and the bridge spanning the St. Croix River can't continue to bear the burden of traffic on one of the metro's busiest freeways. He estimates that 100,000 vehicles cross the bridge daily. "We see a lot of growth and the physical bottleneck of the river," he said. "We are very oriented toward commerce to the Twin Cities." St. Croix County, at the border with Minnesota, has the fastest rate of population growth in Wisconsin. Thousands of residents in St. Croix, Dunn and Eau Claire counties commute to work in St. Paul and Minneapolis. "We think that rail as a transportation option certainly opens up workforce opportunities back and forth," said Bill Rubin, executive director of the St. Croix Economic Development Corp. Passenger rail would attract new businesses along I-94 and adds "a little cosmopolitan flair" to the outlying metro area, he said. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
Eddie Robinson Museum opens at Grambling State - CBS Sports Posted: 13 Feb 2010 08:13 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. GRAMBLING, La. -- In a lesser-known period of the late football coach Eddie Robinson's long career, he once coached the Grambling State women's basketball team. On Saturday, the 91st anniversary of Robinson's birth, the old gym took on new life as an 18,000-square-foot museum honoring Robinson's life and his 55 years as Grambling's coach. "The great thing is that this has happened to a great American," said Wilbert Ellis, who coached the Grambling baseball team for 43 years and was a driving force behind the museum. On a gray, cold day, with patches of snow lingering in trees and on the ground, hundreds of dignitaries, former players, coaches and fans waited for the first view of the museum, even as workers scrambled to complete displays. The son of a sharecropper and housekeeper, Robinson, who died in 2007, turned Grambling into a household name. He won 408 football games and had 45 winning seasons, even if the impact he made off the field is what left a lasting impression on so many people. Brian Kelly, who became the Notre Dame coach in December, said Robinson had been a role model for many years and for many reasons, citing an 80 percent graduation rate among his players. "In a cynical profession, where so many are always looking for the next job, all Coach Rob cared about was the next young man," Kelly said. Robinson was more interested in how his athletes succeeded in life than in the games he coached, although he was demanding on the field, said Lenora D. Miller, 76, who was coached in basketball by Robinson. "When we traveled for a game, if there was a cultural or educational event going on, we went to it," the retired teacher recalled. "Coach wanted us to get as much out of life as possible." Talk about a museum for Robinson began decades ago. "We never thought it would take three governors, three secretaries of state and numerous members of the committee to make this come true," said museum committee co-chairman Douglas Porter. In the meantime, the awards, plaques, pictures and memorabilia were building up. They were jammed under beds and into closets of the rambling house where Robinson and his wife Doris lived. More were stuffed in a backyard shed. Some was in storage facilities and two tractor-trailers. "I want it to be somewhere people can see it," Doris Robinson said after her husband's death in 2007. The beautifully renovated museum doors open on a rotunda. In the center is a life-size bronze statue of Robinson, holding a football. Around him are depictions of his 88-year life. Another section is covered with pictures of the more than 200 players Robinson sent on to professional football careers. Trophies crowd showcases, plaques and awards are everywhere. "This all came out of a promise I made Rob before he died," Ellis said. "I told him we'd get this done, but sometimes even I wondered how." Ellis and a group of friends raised $300,000 toward the museum, and in 2008 the Louisiana Legislature came up with the rest of the $4.2 million. Construction began in early 2009. "This is a great day for our family," Eddie Robinson Jr. said Saturday. Robinson's widow, Doris, 91, did not attend because of the weather. "Don't worry, she'll see it very soon," he said. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
Travel books: From cruises to Cape Town - Seattle Times Posted: 13 Feb 2010 07:08 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. Here's a look at some newly published travel books: Beginner's Guide to Cruising (BookSurge Publishing, $15) People considering a cruise for the first time can be overwhelmed by choices: which cruise line, ship, itinerary? These and other questions are answered in Aaron Mase's book, a short primer on the complexities of cruise travel. He also offers advice on what to do when you finally board and how to handle the last day of the cruise. In addition, he comments on topics from seasickness to laundry. Stern's Guide to the Cruise Vacation (2010 edition, Pelican, $26) More experienced travelers — and those not intimidated by sheer size (736 pages) — can turn to cruise expert Steven B. Stern. Updated annually, the book's 20th edition covers virtually everything you need to know about cruise vacations. In addition to the preparation procedures, he has chapters on all kinds of specialty cruising, such as for singles, and cruising with children. Of course, the cruise lines and the ships get the full treatment. British Columbia & the Yukon (Lonely Planet, $19.99) With the 2010 Winter Olympics under way in British Columbia, this is a good time to take a look at B.C. and its northern neighbor, the Yukon Territory. The authors recommend various theme trips to consider, such as Foodie B.C., a wine-flavored journey (the Okanagan Valley has dozens of wineries) or a trip that takes in various UNESCO World Heritage sites, from Banff to the Klondike area. Because most people go to experience the outdoors, there is plenty of information on activities such as cycling and mountain biking, hiking and backpacking, skiing and snowboarding. The authors also spend considerable space, rightly so, on British Columbia's best-known ski resorts, including Whistler, host of Olympic events. Moving northward, they offer brief portraits of the Yukon's small cities and towns, from Whitehorse (at population 23,000, the biggest) to Dawson City, the-end-of-the-road former Gold Rush town. For literary buffs, Dawson City also boasts poet and writer Robert Service's cabin and the Jack London Interpretive Center. As with every Lonely Planet book, a big part of the fun is perusing the many fascinating sidebars, such as the brief description of curling, one of Canada's national sports ("loosely defined as shuffleboard on ice") or their concise sketch of the three main highways that run through the Yukon. National Geographic Image Collection(National Geographic, $50) When you have almost 11 million images to choose from, selecting the best can be tough. But the editors behind this marvelous collection were up to the challenge. They chose 450 photos that capture the range of National Geographic's remarkable collection. Photography curator Michelle Anne Delaney wrote an essay offering a historical perspective on the collection, and Leah Bendavid-Val wrote the foreword. "We've made room," Bendavid-Val notes, "for the whimsical, the quirky and the unexpected." The society was established in 1888; nine months after that first meeting, National Geographic magazine was published. The first photograph to appear in the magazine, of remote Herald Island in the Arctic in the July 1890 issue, is included here. The historic scenes are impressive in their own right and are potent reminders of the power of images: a stark photo of an ice-clogged ship in the Arctic Ocean in 1905-06, a photo of an astronaut floating above Earth, or the solitude of a Martian sunset. Some photos are simply one of a kind: three police officers — triplets — staring straight into the camera while sitting in a New Jersey squad car in 1981 or the world as seen through one drop of seawater. The book is divided into four major sections: exploration, wildlife, people and culture, and science and climate change. Cape Town: City Guide (Lonely Planet, $19.99) Cape Town is considered South Africa's most multicultural city. It's Christian but also Muslim and Jewish and Hindu and gay-friendly as well as traditionally African. And it's one of the South African cities hosting soccer's World Cup in June. It also is linguistically complex: Three of South Africa's 11 official languages are spoken here: Afrikaans (spoken by many), English (spoken by nearly everyone) and Xhosa (spoken primarily by blacks). The authors describe what to do, see and eat in various neighborhoods and suburbs and also suggest several walking tours. An entire chapter is devoted to wine, because more than 200 wineries are within a day's drive of Cape Town. One of the popular places to visit is Robben Island — now a museum and United Nations World Heritage site — where visitors can see Nelson Mandela's cell. And given South Africa's complicated history, the authors have a useful sidebar on how visitors can cope with the country's history and reaction to racism. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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