“A gardener’s philosophy - Dalles Chronicle” plus 4 more

A gardener’s philosophy - Dalles Chronicle
Aggressive Draft Philosophy Helped Build Jets - FanHouse
Sky Work AG - CharterX
Will Scott Brown's win move the GOP back to a big-tent philosophy? Joe ... - Cleveland Plain Dealer
Mike Preston - Baltimore Sun

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

A gardener’s philosophy - Dalles Chronicle

Posted: 23 Jan 2010 11:55 AM PST

January 24, 2010

A gardener's philosophy
In winter, Barbara Bailey's garden shows its bones

By Kathy Ursprung
The Chronicle

     Barbara Bailey's canvas stretches out around her, painted in muted winter hues of copper, beige and green.
     "I think gardening is an art," Bailey says. "It's a way to express inspiration about color, structure and the nest you live in."
     The vibrant reds and blues that punctuate Bailey's garden in growing season, are absent in these quiet winter months. Instead, drying beige hydrangea blossoms, evergreen shrubbery, and tall, bronzed grasses lend to a more delicate palette.
     "There's beauty in bare stems," Bailey says. She leaves the blooms on daisies, as well as hydrangeas, until spring. When leaves and color are gone, the plant's structure reveals itself.
     But Bailey is already thinking of plants in her favorite colors for the coming seasons: red-bore kale and red brussel sprouts.
     Bailey is this year's president of Wasco County Master Gardeners and enjoys a lifelong love of working with soil and seeds. As a child, she remembers getting angry with her father — also a gardener — when he hired a man to do the hoeing.
     "I wanted to do it," she said.
     Today, gardening is an artistic outlet. Bailey enjoys combining flowers in creative and colorful ways. A single-bloom red Altissimo climbing rose, for
example, is combined with the vibrant blue of a clematis vine.
     "I like intense colors," she says. "I tolerate daffodils — I'm not very fond of yellow and orange."
     Choose a palette and pick plants in accordance with that palette, Bailey urges. Doing so helps pull a garden together. Grouping plants together in masses, rather than planting in rows, also helps a gardener get "more bang for your buck," she says.
     She loves to see animals in her landscape, from her own dogs, horses and chickens, to the birds, butterflies and small mammals her garden attracts.
While Bailey has help with the heavy garden work, she says, "I love to get my hands in dirt. It's very therapeutic."
     Sitting in her living room, overlooking the landscape, Bailey pulls out a dog-eared garden journal, divided into sections, and bulging with various bits tucked between its pages.
     "Philosophy is my favorite," she says, smiling as she thumbs through the journal she has kept for almost 30 years.
     "'Made precious by a gentle and quiet spirit,'" she reads, the words of an earlier Master Gardener.
     "'Marry your garden,'" is another adage, meaning to relate colors and shapes to each other within a garden.
     Bailey has her own garden philosophies as well. Among them, is starting from seeds.
     "I do a lot with seeds," she says. She sprouts them in one of several raised beds before transplanting them, starting later than many local gardeners.
"One of the biggest temptations is to plant a garden too early," she says. "The first of May is early enough."
     To punctuate her words, she reads another bit from her philosophy file, this time from a Russian poet: "The Lord is not merciful to reapers and gardeners."
     Bailey finds random factors exciting in gardens, so the flowerbed that greets visitors in the front of the house features a weather-worn iron sculpture, and her vegetable garden includes an antique metal lawn chair next, where she can pause to enjoy the garden and the antique school bell that adorns it.
     Antiques are part of her garden architecture.
     "I like old things," she says. "I like to give them one more life."
     In addition to flower and vegetable gardens, Bailey, whose family operates some of the largest orchards in the area, started her own tiny orchard five years ago. It includes a variety of special fruits, such as the old-fashioned favorite, quince. Bailey likes to bring the fruit inside to enjoy their lovely scent in her home.
     Gardening has been Bailey's lifelong love and she hopes to inspire the same kind of love in her grandchildren, who are growing up in The Dalles. The dedication of her garden journal was written in 1998 to her young grandson, Gus, now a teenager. It reads, in part:
     "Don't ever hold back an intense desire to place a tiny seed in loamy ground, to nurture all nature, and to give thanks to some pagan gods fro the beauty you experience. Your spirit will be enriched as you care for the world around you."

Aggressive Draft Philosophy Helped Build Jets - FanHouse

Posted: 23 Jan 2010 05:14 AM PST

Mark Sanchez is one of five players the Jets have traded up to pick in their last three drafts.

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- Jets coaches and scouts liked Shonn Greene. A lot. So much so that when the Iowa running back was still available on the second day of last year's draft, they decided they should trade three of their remaining four picks to move up and take him with the first pick of the third round. These coaches and scouts were sure Greene was worth it -- that he was the best running back in the draft for the style of team they were building. The only problem was convincing GM Mike Tannenbaum to make the deal.

"The last thing I wanted to do was trade up twice," Tannenbaum, who'd already moved up to take quarterback Mark Sanchez at No. 5 the day before, told FanHouse on Thursday. "But our guys were persistent, and we had a first-round grade on Shonn. So ultimately, to trade a third, fourth and seventh-rounder for a guy we had a first-round grade on, it became a no-brainer."

It also became the fifth trade-up deal the Jets have made in the past three drafts, establishing them as an aggressive drafting team that considers it more important to get the player they want than to stockpile late-round picks for depth.

"Every situation was different," Tannenbaum said. "But basically, if we believe in our process and there's somebody we really want, we're going to do what we can."

The first example happened in 2007, when the Jets wanted a cornerback and had two of them -- Darrelle Revis and Leon Hall -- rated very highly on their draft board. They liked them both, but they preferred Revis, thanks to what they'd seen with their own eyes in pre-draft workouts. They were set to pick 25th, and the Bengals, who also wanted a cornerback, were picking 18th.

The Giants (at 20) and the Patriots (at 24) were also making noise about those defensive backs, and the Jets decided they'd miss out on both if they waited until 25. So they traded their first, second and fifth-round picks to Carolina in exchange for the No. 14 overall pick (and Carolina's sixth-rounder) and moved up to take Revis, who has become one of the stars of this NFL season. The Bengals took Hall at No. 18, and the Giants took another corner, Aaron Ross, at 20.

"That's a lot of respect," Revis said Friday. "I appreciate that the Jets would bump up (11) spots to get me, and I'm here, and I didn't steer them wrong. That's just good player personnel. They know what kind of guys they want and they need. They've done it in free agency, too, with guys like Damien Woody, Calvin Pace and Thomas Jones. They do a great job of scouting and getting the guys they know they want."

Later in that same draft, the Jets traded second, third and sixth-round picks to Green Bay for the No. 47 overall pick, with which they took linebacker David Harris. (They also got the Packers' seventh-round pick in that deal.) And in 2008, they traded a second and a fourth-rounder to the Packers for the No. 30 overall pick, which became tight end Dustin Keller.

Tannenbaum said part of the key to the draft philosophy is the work they do in free agency. Specifically, he cited players such as Brandon Moore and Mike DeVito as examples of undrafted free agents who have helped the Jets maintain their depth even as they deal away draft picks. And, he said, it's important to him that these draft-day deals don't include future-year picks. The Jets are down a couple of picks in this year's draft, but only because of the trades that brought in veterans Lito Sheppard and Braylon Edwards.

"As best we can, we try to pay our bills within each year's draft," Tannenbaum said. "That's very important to us, to try to stay within each year."

That helps keep it uncomplicated, and allows the Jets to evaluate each draft as its own entity. The '07 draft becomes the one where they got Revis and Harris. The 09 draft is the one where they got Sanchez and Greene. As they knock on the door of Super Bowl XLIV, it doesn't much matter to them that they only had one other draft pick in 2009 or two others in 2007. When it comes to the draft, the Jets employ a quality-over-quantity philosophy. And here on the eve of their AFC Championship Game matchup with the Colts, it's one with which they're pretty happy.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Sky Work AG - CharterX

Posted: 23 Jan 2010 11:33 AM PST

Skywork was born on the philosophy that integrity, exceptional service and total commitment will produce results which soar above the competition. Skywork president Alex Gribi has devoted most of his life to quality in aviation and this is reflected by a highly competent and dedicated team. Their commitment has turned this philosophy into reality. Skywork is the choice for discerning travellers, and will fly to any destination faster, safer, and more comfortably than any other airline company. Skywork clients can demand the exceptional.

Established: 1983 • Fleet: 6 • Pilots: 20 full time
Certificate: 1039 (CH)
Email: info@skywork.ch
URL: http://www.skywork.ch

Bases

Fleet

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Will Scott Brown's win move the GOP back to a big-tent philosophy? Joe ... - Cleveland Plain Dealer

Posted: 23 Jan 2010 02:29 AM PST

By Joe Frolik, The Plain Dealer

January 23, 2010, 5:30AM

Charles Krupa / Associated PressSen.-elect Scott Brown, R-Mass., isn't an exact fit of the coservative Republican model ... he's pro-choice and supports Massachusetts' more-liberal health program. So will his victory in a longtime Democratic state change how the GOP views potential candidates?Massachusetts miracle: Republicans trying to figure out what went right for Scott Brown have focused on how he used his outsider persona and pickup truck to harness the energy of the "tea party" movement and ride an anti-Washington wave. But what many have missed is the way grassroots conservatives rallied behind a guy who didn't meet all their litmus tests: Brown's pro-choice and, for all his anti-Obamacare rhetoric, supports the Massachusetts health insurance plan with its individual mandates, subsidies and insurance exchanges. If GOP true believers and their tea party pals can emulate that "big tent" model -- and they haven't in other states including New York, Utah, Illinois and Florida -- Democrats could be in really big trouble this November.

Most interesting tidbit in the New York Times's postmortem on Massachusetts: The Republican Senate Campaign Committee actually detected Brown's surge relatively early and began channeling aid to him, but deliberately kept a microscopically low profile -- even as conservative bloggers were complaining that Brown was being ignored by the national party. Credit RSCC Chair John Cornyn for recognizing that if he went public, he would alert sleepy Democrats that Brown was on the move -- and undermine his guy's indie cred.

Back when Brown simply hoped to run a credible enough campaign to make a name in Massachusetts and set himself up for a future statewide race, he budgeted $1.2 million. Early numbers suggest he ended raising and spending more than $13 million. By Election Day, campaign officials say, he was getting $1 million a day via the Internet. . . Tuesday was also a good day for Mitt Romney. He embraced Brown early on and the new senator's win will surely enhance Romney's standing as a 2012 GOP frontrunner. In addition, Shawmut, a Boston consulting firm consisting of Romney's closest political operatives, ran Brown's textbook campaign.

Punch line: Three weeks ago, Martha Coakley was widely viewed – in Democratic circles at least – as a rising star. And why not? She was the apparently popular attorney general of Massachusetts and the off-the-charts favorite to win the late Ted Kennedy's seat as the first women elected to the Senate from her state. Today she's the poster child for out-of-touch political insiders, the loser of a race that everybody but Scott Brown knew she couldn't lose. This is especially true among Democrats, many of whom simply can't accept the idea that Brown earned his victory. Just about the only person who's not down on Coakley is the attorney general herself; she told the Boston Globe, "I did what I felt was the best campaign I could do."

That probably won't play too well outside her immediate family. Even before the polls closed, loyal reader Kurt Landefeld, a Sandusky area public affairs consultant, predicted that if Coakley lost she was doomed to enter the political lexicon -- and not in a nice way. This Democrat's (and political junkie's) take:

"Coakley"...n. A political candidate who, as an overwhelming favorite, manages to lose his/her race due to lackluster campaigning, repeated gaffes and foibles, and an incredibly tinned ear to the collective voice of her/his would-be constituency. "Watch out. She's a Coakley." "He's so Coakley he makes Blackwell look like Obama."

v. "to coakley" The act of blowing a race with seemingly insurmountable lead in an incredibly short period of time. "In 1980, 11-term Congressman Lud Ashley coakleyed his race to newcomer Ed Weber. In 1982 Weber, in turn, was beaten by current Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur."

Thanks, Kurt. By the way, Coakley told the Globe she's looking forward to running for re-election to her current job in November. That can't be too reassuring to embattled Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick.

Legacy time: If President Barack Obama tries to regain some bipartisan luster, one winner from Tuesday's upset could be Ohio's George Voinovich. The retiring Republican got a White House audience with Obama, who's apparently decided to embrace one of Voinovich's pet causes: A commission to rein in entitlement spending and cut the deficit. Voinovich -- who told WCPN FM/90.3 Ideastream's Dan Moulthrop last fall that there are a lot of Obama's health care ideas that he likes in concept -- might also be a prime target if the White House decides to tackle that issue piecemeal.

Ballot names: The GOP was already doing well getting the candidates it wanted into key races, but the glow of Brown's victory may party recruiters pushing to sign up a few more stars. The day after the Massachusetts vote, former Wisconsin Gov. and Bush II Cabinet member Tommy Thompson, who's never shown much interest in the Senate, was publicly discussing a challenge to incumbent Democrat Russ Feingold. And Indiana Rep. Mike Pence talked to GOP leaders about running against Sen. Evan Bayh. Pence remains a longshot. Reportedly he's not convinced that the moderate Bayh is all that vulnerable and would rather wait until 20012 when the job of term-limited Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels will be open.

Trouble spot: Most recent polls -- as well as election results in Virginia, New Jersey and now Massachusetts -- show serious erosion for the president among white, working-class voters. They were always a hard sell for Obama, one reason he fared so poorly in the Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia primaries. He did better in November 2008, but only after collapse of Lehman Brothers and the economic meltdown made John McCain pretty much unelectable. Look for more visits to places like Lorain as the White House shifts its political focus to jobs and tries to reconnect with core Democratic constituencies. The New Republic's John Judis, in a strong piece on Obama's blue-collar blues, notes that when the president flew in to try to rescue Coakley last Sunday, he spoke not in a union hall or a working-class bastion like Springfield, but on the campus of Northeastern University. Maybe not as bad as going to, say, Harvard, but not exactly Main Street either.

Game change: Democrats are convinced the Supreme Court's decision to allow corporations -- and presumably labor unions -- to spend directly on candidate elections will give the GOP a huge cash injection. That's why they were talking about passing new rules on campaign finance -- maybe even a constitutional amendment -- before anyone even had time to read the 180-page opinion. But while the rules have changed, it's not clear the game will, at least immediately. The tab for political ads in 2008 was $2.6 billion. Can it really go up significantly? There's only so much inventory – that is, so much television time to buy.

More likely, say some observers, is that 527 groups and other fronts used to circumvent the old law will disappear in favor of direct buys. But even then you have to wonder how many businesses will take a direct role in partisan battles and risk alienating customers. Gut hunch: You'll see targeted attempts to take out or elect a particular candidate in races that are low on the political radar. But give voters credit – as long as they know who's paying for ads (the court clearly supported disclosure requirements) and why, they'll weigh that when considering the message.

Here's maybe the biggest question about the decision: What happened to the John Roberts who all through his confirmation process insisted that cases should be decided on the narrowest of grounds -- and indeed acted that way during his first few years as chief justice? Because there were certainly a lot of ways to rebuke the FEC's handling of the Citizens United and its anti-Hillary Clinton screed that wouldn't have required overturning 102 years of apparently settled law.

Do read: The Wall Street Journal's superb Gerald Seib on how Democrats misread their successes in 2006 and 2008. After analyzing polling data, he says what really happened is that American voters turned on the Republican Party because they were fed up with the way it governed, not the ideas it advanced. The percentages of Americans who describe themselves as liberal, conservative or moderate haven't changed since 2006 – and liberals remain the smallest market segment. Especially worth a read if you're a liberal who thinks the president needs to turn more sharply to the left to fix his political problems.

Whatever your politics, you'll get a chuckle out of Boston Globe columnist Scott McGrory's take on that that most unlikely object of desire -- the Massachusetts electorate.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Mike Preston - Baltimore Sun

Posted: 23 Jan 2010 12:09 PM PST

Mike Preston

January 23, 2010

Football fans across the country wanted San Diego versus Indianapolis in the AFC championship game Sunday, but New York Jets coach Rex Ryan said it was the Ravens who ruined the perfect game.

If the Ravens had beaten Indianapolis in their divisional playoff game, the Jets would be hosting the Ravens on Sunday instead of playing the Colts on the road.

"It would have been the perfect matchup," said Ryan, who spent the previous 10 years as a Ravens assistant, during which he built some of the NFL's best defenses. "It would have been old-school. You got two great defenses and two teams that run the ball. You have a team that made it this far last year and the team that is coached by the former longtime assistant.

"There are a lot of people in that building that I love and respect," Ryan said of the Ravens. "Plus, it would have been a home game for me."

And who would have won?

"Oh, I wanted them here to kick their butts," Ryan said, smiling. "I ain't going to lie to you."

Instead, Ryan will fly to Indianapolis, where his Jets are the underdogs of the four remaining teams to win the Super Bowl. But could there have been a better role for the Jets and their lovable, loudmouth coach?

Ryan is eating it up. He has more material than Letterman, Leno and O'Brien combined.

"I know, everybody wanted to see the Chargers and the Colts, and the quarterbacks, and explosive offenses, and yada, yada, yada," said Ryan, 47. "Guess what? We're here. The Jets, the team that backed into the playoffs.

"We're not pretty, but you know what you're going to see Sunday, and that's ground and pound, ground and pound, ground and pound."

Ryan was referring to the Jets' offensive philosophy. Because they have a rookie quarterback in Mark Sanchez, they like to limit his mistakes by running the ball. New York had the No. 1 rushing attack in the NFL in the regular season.

The Jets also had the league's best defense in the regular season, a formula the Ravens used to win their Super Bowl title in 2001. The Ravens applied the same philosophy a year ago when quarterback Joe Flacco was a rookie.

"Ground and pound, I got that saying from watching those [ UFC] fights," Ryan said. "I love that stuff. One guy takes the other guy down, and then he just pounds him while he is down.

"We had a rookie quarterback, and you can use one in certain situations. I thought our defense was good enough to ride the ups and downs of a rookie quarterback.

"In Baltimore, we had several years where we had to survive the ups and downs of our offense. Brian [Billick] once told me that you can't win a title like that anymore because the game has changed. We'll see. If you play good defense and run the football, you've got a chance in any game."

It's a style Ryan learned from his dad, Buddy Ryan, a former head coach in Philadelphia and Arizona. Ryan also picked up his dad's demeanor and confidence.

The Ryans have a history of building great defenses with the focus of putting pressure on the quarterback. It's a great philosophy, and Rex Ryan was great in Baltimore at devising exotic blitzes.

But what makes Ryan special is his ability to peer into players' souls and get them to play hard for him. Ryan's strength is being himself. So when he talked about not kissing New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick's rings before the season started, it was no big deal.

And when he cried before his players after a loss this season, there were no surprises in the locker room, just outside it.

"I know who I am and what I'm about, and so do my players," Ryan said. "I have this rule about the media with my players where they can say whatever they want.

"Sometimes, yeah, we don't line up right. Sometimes we do things wrong, but I don't want them just to mutter coach-speak. I want them to tell the truth, let the community get to know them. I don't want a bunch of drones.

"When I first got here, I wanted them to know I had dyslexia so if they didn't want to hire [me], then don't," he said. "I didn't want to be the corporate coach, the one who majored in Coach Speak 101. The best thing about being a head coach is you have input on both sides of the ball and you get to shape the attitude and spirit of your team."

That's what Ryan wanted to do in Baltimore. He did it his own way as an assistant. With the possible exception of Marvin Lewis, he became the most popular Ravens assistant, as big as John Harbaugh, the head coach under whom he worked.

But Ryan never got more than an interview when the Ravens fired Billick after the 2007 season. There was speculation he was too close to the players, and he certainly didn't fit the corporate image that owners around the league wanted to portray.

"That's a great organization in Baltimore, and I really wanted to put my stamp on it after 10 years in the organization," Ryan said. "But I got a similar situation here with the Jets with a supportive owner and GM.

"That was tough when I didn't get the job in Baltimore, but John gave me a chance to come back, and that was a great experience."

"Now it's on to Indy, where we have to ... not give up big plays, contest throws and get hips on people. It's a tough challenge, but so was going to San Diego."

Deep down inside, though, Ryan wanted a crack at his former team.

"That would have been nice," he said, "but the Ravens messed it up."

Listen to Mike Preston from noon to 2 p.m. on Mondays and Fridays on 105.7 FM.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Philosophy

Saturday, January 23, 2010