1953 to Ramona (Bohn) Halberstadt and Floyd Halberstadt He was on his 46th year as a bus driver for the Northeast School Corporation He was employed by the Sullivan-Vigo Rural Water Corporation mowing the lawn at the water tower Robin was survived by his mother Ramona Halberstadt and sister Penny Halberstadt A graveside service will be held at Pogue Cemetery on Thursday Online condolences can be made at www.debaunfuneralhomes.com Anna Ruth “Ruthie” Halberstadt joined the Jackson School of Geosciences in fall 2024 as an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences She specifically studies Antarctica’s warm periods and how this history can provide insights on future ice sheet changes as the climate continues to change Antarctica’s ice sheet responds very slowly to climate conditions Halberstadt said; Many of the ice sheet changes that we are currently observing were activated by the world’s climate thousands of years ago “The world we’re in currently is so unprecedented and the ice sheet we have today is not the ice sheet that’s stable under the modern conditions,” she said This is why it’s key to look to the past for clues about Antarctica’s future and the implications for global sea level rise Halberstadt has done field work in Antarctica three times once camping in the McMurdo Dry Valleys for several weeks while conducting research on ice sheet climate sensitivity during the Miocene epoch about 14–17 million years ago — the last time that the Earth’s carbon dioxide levels were significantly higher than they are today There has historically been a bit of a divide between scientists collecting data and scientists using numerical models to understand ice sheet stability; Halberstadt’s niche is that she uses both geologic data and climate and ice sheet modeling in her research “My goal is to bridge that divide — anchoring the models in something true and making the data something that’s actually useful for models She said that she is looking forward to being part of a vibrant geoscience and higher education community that is engaged in new ideas Halberstadt said she is also excited by the potential for collaboration She did her doctoral work alongside Benjamin Keisling a research assistant professor at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics She’s also admired Professor Ginny Catania’s research on glaciers from afar for years For more information, contact: Anton Caputo, Jackson School of Geosciences, 512-232-9623; Monica Kortsha, Jackson School of Geosciences, 512-471-2241; Constantino Panagopulos University of Texas Institute for Geophysics I joined Boston Consulting Group (BCG) as a 22-year-old college graduate with the ambition to work for change I fell for the allure of well-tailored slogans and glittering credentials which obscured the unambitious conformity and moral bankruptcy of the safe management-consulting path students compete for selective consulting roles at McKinsey and Bain—the “Big Three.” These firms offer high compensation and the promise of intellectually stimulating work I found this pitch compelling and prepared rigorously for the interview process My efforts paid off when I received an offer from BCG I traveled to Atlanta for training and found myself at a dinner table full of polished young people A Yale undergraduate gushed about her desire to decarbonize the American economy (she flew over 500 miles to the training) purring with quasi-religious fervor about the racial equity initiatives he worked on during his BCG internship last summer We all adopted serious expressions and nodded fervently acknowledging the importance of this critical work which boiled down to facilitating mass migration into the United States of America We spent months helping our clients streamline the distribution of free benefits to migrants which BCG’s website calls “a humanitarian and business imperative.”  The ideological distortions continued as BCG senior leadership assured us that special consideration would be given to the distribution of hiring and promotion outcomes across racial and gender identities led me down a path of reevaluating the role that BCG plays in American society I am now convinced that the interests of BCG and the transnational professional-managerial class are at odds with the values and welfare of the American people While my own work at BCG focused, at least at first, on migration, the firm is better known for promoting DEI. It offers an entire suite of consulting services geared to helping organizational clients embed DEI into operations including “customer journey BCG has completed hundreds of DEI projects including “Propelling Gender Diversity and Inclusion in the Mining Industry.” BCG’s DEI work has been as wide-reaching as it is destructive The firm has completed 180 racial equity projects since 2020 which often included “Diversity & Inclusion Assessments for Leadership,” codifying DEI into the DNA of American companies BCG recently identified 29 DEI interventions for a major retail client with over 200,000 employees assigning racial and gender representation targets to each business unit and codifying policies to hold senior leaders accountable for achieving these targets Within BCG’s own four walls, DEI is a top priority. BCG rigorously tracks and optimizes gender and racial characteristics. Here I refer to BCG’s 2024 DEI Report ·       Investing $89 Million into DEI initiatives ·       Donating $1M to DEI nonprofits ·       Putting 100 percent of its U.S leaders through an annual DEI review process ·       Reducing the number of white hires from 51 percent to 45 percent from 2021 to 2023 ·       Redirecting internal supply chains to minority-owned businesses Perhaps the most humorous turn in BCG’s DEI journey is their leadership training. As a part of their broader $89 million investment into DEI initiatives, over 800 of BCG’s senior leaders have participated in a “1.5-day Groundwater Immersive Experience” to learn more about systemic racism This program is highly reminiscent of the antics seen in Matt Walsh’s recent Am I Racist documentary film where Walsh’s character encourages white participants in a DEI seminar to self-flagellate certified DEI experts begin preaching short homilies on “Structural Racial Arrangement” and the “History and Construction of Race” broken up by somber moments of silent reflection which BCG actively propagates across critical American institutions Most recently, McKinsey, BCG, and Bain have been driving the emerging storyline on how return-to-work policies are creating inequities across racial and gender groups These firms use this narrative as a “burning platform” to sell additional work to “close the equity gap.” Given how bureaucratic these consulting firms have become I remain confident that there is minimal individual malice involved in BCG’s heavy-handed contributions to the DEI-Industrial Complex Amid the obvious absurdity of this left-wing ideological project it can be easy to forget the tangible downstream consequences that these activities have on blue-collar Appalachians who are now subject to racial and gender quotas that have nothing to do with their values or way of life DEI persists as one of the most toxic forces pillaging American communities.  We find ourselves in a time where legacy consulting firms keeping them fed and comfortable as they drift into moral cowardice and corresponding intellectual dullness with the ultimate result of lessening the dynamism of our business landscape and decelerating the possibilities for our future.  To my fellow young people on the safe management consulting path what could be less ambitious than continuing to tinker with contract dashboards on behalf of mega-corporations that undermine your country but you draft DEI statements for Johnson & Johnson.  Today, the U.S. government spends over a billion dollars annually on consulting services from BCG, McKinsey, and Bain, companies that advance corrosive globalist ideologies. However, the American people voted decisively in November 2024 to advance a different vision for America’s future. As we build America’s new Golden Age the Trump Administration should aggressively regulate and fully divest from these anti-American consulting firms.  But cutting ties with these damaging firms will not be sufficient. We need new leaders to emerge who will advance a successor model to the managerial regime— a model that prioritizes ownership and civic virtue finding within themselves sufficient disdain for the triviality of the rotting legacy institutions and sufficient courage to align with new institutions building an alternative future Now that President Trump has been inaugurated our nation stands at a fork in the road: will we stagnate under the thumb of the transnational professional-managerial class Or will we build a new economy that unlocks American potential and revitalizes our way of life Nathan Halberstadt is the Chief of Staff at New Founding. You can follow him on X @NatHalberstadt Your support helps us continue our mission of providing thoughtful we can maintain our commitment to principled reporting on the issues that matter most This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page Metrics details Pliocene global temperatures periodically exceeded modern levels offering insights into ice sheet sensitivity to warm climates Ice-proximal geologic records from this period provide crucial but limited glimpses of Antarctic Ice Sheet behavior We use an ice sheet model driven by climate model snapshots to simulate transient glacial cyclicity from 4.5 to 2.6 Ma providing spatial and temporal context for geologic records By evaluating model simulations against a comprehensive synthesis of geologic data we translate the intermittent geologic record into a continuous reconstruction of Antarctic sea level contributions revealing a dynamic ice sheet that contributed up to 25 m of glacial-interglacial sea level change Model grounding line behavior across all major Antarctic catchments exhibits an extended period of receded ice during the mid-Pliocene coincident with proximal geologic data around Antarctica but earlier than peak warmth in the Northern Hemisphere Marine ice sheet collapse is triggered with 1.5 °C model subsurface ocean warming Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) behavior dominated the global sea-level signal; therefore reconstructing ice sheet dynamics during this key time period is crucial for providing context for global sea-level reconstructions and improving future sea level rise projections these time-evolving three-dimensional ice sheet simulations provide spatial and temporal context for geologic records Transient model results are directly comparable to geologic records of ice sheet dynamics (for example We compile a suite of currently available marine and terrestrial geologic data from across the Antarctic continent synthesize these data into discrete model evaluation criteria and systematically apply the geologic criteria to an ensemble of multimillion-year simulations performed under different combinations of key parameters (ice sheet sensitivity to ocean temperature MICI parameterizations of ice cliff failure rates and hydrofracturing propagation and the methodology for scaling climate input; “Methods”) Each ice sheet model simulation is compared against these datasets to identify best-fit simulations with the highest fidelity to the currently available ice-proximal geologic record Best-fit model simulations are used to extrapolate pinpoint geologic records into a continuous and geologically constrained reconstruction of AIS contribution to Pliocene sea level An ensemble of ice sheet model simulations performed under three main parameter variations produces a range of glacial behavior across glacial/interglacial cycles a–c Simulated Pliocene Antarctic esl (equivalent global mean sea-level contribution relative to modern calculated from the total ice amount in the domain divided by global ocean area) but model runs are colored by different parameter values: a sensitivity to ocean temperature b method of scaling the climate forcing methodology and c hydrofracturing (see the text for parameter descriptions) d Grounded ice sheet configurations for representative interglacial (IG) and glacial (G) time slices for select model members demonstrate the wide range in spatial variability that can be simulated under different sets of parameter values Each model simulation is assessed for consistency with the available geologic data across marine sectors and terrestrial constraints (see Supplementary Table S1 for specific geologic criteria) Cell color reflects the evaluation of model-data consistency and cell width indicates the confidence of this evaluation; a ‘least confident’ classification may result from the equivocal nature of geologic evidence or inherent difficulties with comparing model results with that particular kind of geologic data (e.g. Model scores are calculated by multiplying the model-data agreement score for each criterion (1 Model member naming convention reflects the parameter combination (ocean temperature sensitivity OC 2,3,4—hydrofracture parameterization HF off,low,medlo,medhi,max—climate matrix scaling approach area,vol) Total sea-level amplitude “SL ampl.” reports the largest difference in sea-level equivalent (m SLE) between maximum and minimum ice sheet configurations while “Max masl” reports the maximum sea-level equivalent contribution above present Geologic data from Wilkes Subglacial Basin is split into two categories: datasets constraining glacial advance and retreat across the continental shelf versus datasets constraining the inland extent of grounding line retreat Asterisks denote the two best-fit model runs identified by weighting simulations based on model-data comparison confidence thus reconstructing the frequency behavior of ice sheet thinning and thickening This approach has only been employed at the Pirrit Hills; however the pattern of cyclic bedrock exposure at this location is not consistent with any model simulations Model-data comparison using exposure age datasets is hampered by the coarse model resolution which does not resolve the mountain peaks where data were collected; additionally the ice thickness frequency dataset is integrated across a different time period as the simulations in our model ensemble Grounding line positions through time are plotted for best-fit runs d OC2-HFmedhi-vol and e OC2-HFmedlo-area showing the spatial variability of the ice sheet ranging from grounded ice expansion across the continental shelf to collapse of all marine-based ice The simulated sea-level amplitudes and model scores within our ensemble are not directly correlated; some of the worst-fit simulations also have large sea-level fluctuations (Fig. 2) our compilation of geologic data can inform not just the AIS contribution to Pliocene sea level but also resolve the pattern of past ice sheet dynamics This highlights the added value of considering ice-proximal data along with a sea-level constraint when evaluating past AIS simulations although the exact values identified here are specific to this ice sheet and climate model setup with associated uncertainties The intermediate MICI values that are required to satisfy the compiled Pliocene geologic record also produce ice sheet recession into EAIS marine basins in the future CO2 concentrations and summer insolation values corresponding to each modeled collapse event (defined as the onset of large-scale ice sheet mass loss with rates exceeding 1 m/kyr) are compared to the range of forcing values across all model timesteps Insolation (dt I) is reported as a January 80°S insolation anomaly from modern a Ice sheet mass loss events are separated by East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) and West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) domains WAIS mass loss events are characterized by the disappearance of marine-based portions of the ice sheet; EAIS mass loss events are characterized by grounding line retreat deep into EAIS marine basins b EAIS and c WAIS mass loss events are colored by rate of change (sea-level equivalent Ice sheet hysteresis and surface mass balance patterns could have also affected the unique stability of each interglacial WAIS configuration precluding a clear relationship between forcing strength and ice sheet response Figure 5 also highlights the difference in rates of ice growth versus ice loss; modeled ice sheet growth generally occurs more slowly as ice shelf pinning points coalesce while deglaciation is characterized by rapid ice sheet collapse driven by marine ice sheet (and ice cliff) instabilities This suite of mountain-peak measurements can provide data “anchors” for reconstructing past ice sheet thickness changes; numerical models contextualize these local measurements in space and time b); Area 1 sites are more inland and denoted by black diamonds (DML: Dronning Maud Land—Sør Rondane Mountains PEL: Princess Elizabeth Land—Grove Mountains) and Area 2 sites are more coastal and denoted by black circles (CL: Coats Land—Shackleton Range c Total grounded ice sheet volume compared to a time series of East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) interior thickness (80–90°S 60–120°E) shows an antiphased relationship a–c Model output shown for the best-fit run OC2-HFmedhi-vol d Interior precipitation rates are greater in the climate model with a “warm-interglacial” astronomical orbit compared to the “cold-glacial” orbit (plot shows the difference in precipitation rate between climate model snapshots with 421 ppm CO2 and glacial vs interglacial astronomical orbits) similar to ice thickness changes in the late Quaternary Despite increased surface accumulation during warm periods interglacial ice sheet contribution to GMSL was overwhelmingly dominated by mass loss at marine margins Model grounding line behavior across major Antarctic catchments indicates a period of prolonged ice sheet recession during the mid-Pliocene coincident with proximal geologic data around Antarctica but earlier than the MPWP Our model-data comparison indicates that only intermediate values of modeled MICI parameters are consistent with the geologic record which can help to constrain future sea-level projections is triggered with 1.5 °C model subsurface ocean warming with the description of additional techniques below but with slightly reduced glacial/interglacial variability potentially due to the slightly shallower Pliocene subglacial bathymetry and coarser resolution and smoother bed topography of the paleotopographic reconstruction we extend the Δδ13CP-NA/2 proxy further back in time to 4.5 Ma producing a continuous orbital-scale CO2 time series spanning the Pliocene The timing of ice sheet grounding line fluctuations is sensitive to this highly uncertain paleo-CO2 formulation though the amplitude is robust (model simulations across a time interval where orbital-scale reconstructions are available (3.3–2.6 Ma) produce similar amplitudes of glacial cyclicity as models forced by the Δδ13CP-NA/2 CO2 proxy) Although our δ13C-derived CO2 proxy varies widely, model ice sheet behavior does not directly mirror the CO2 time series forcing (Fig. 3a, b) the simulated period of receded ice from ~3278 to 3142 ka was likely driven by elevated CO2 in the proxy time series which may be an artifact of deep ocean reorganization rather than a change in deep ocean carbon The computational effort of performing an ensemble of multimillion-year simulations requires a 40 km model spatial resolution so our interpretation of the geologic record and model-data comparison efforts are correspondingly coarse resolution we interpret modeled ice sheets that extend across most of the exposed continental shelf as being consistent with geologic records of grounded ice at or near the shelf break We make allowances for these slight discrepancies because the position of the continental shelf edge was changing throughout the Pliocene in many regions our model does not produce an orbitally driven glaciation either Most model results independently correlate with this interpretation, reproducing multiple dynamic WAIS advances across the continental shelf during the early and late Pliocene, with a long period of ice sheet retreat during the PAWP (Supplementary Fig. S9) End-member models with the highest sensitivity to ocean temperature or maximum MICI parameters are not able to grow sufficiently far across the continental shelf Model-data comparison for this region is designated “most confident” given the detailed history of glacial expansion and retreat across the Pliocene Model-data comparison for this region is designated as “most confident” given the detailed history of Pliocene glacial expansion and retreat Model-data comparison in this region is split into two categories: the compilation of numerous multi-proxy geologic evidence of grounding line advance and retreat; and the geochemical constraint on maximum extent of ice retreat both designated a “most confident” model constraint ANDRILL catchment region: Cosmogenic nuclide concentrations in ANDRILL-1B sediments are extremely low46 These sediments are interpreted to reflect ice dynamics across the relatively large land catchment area delivering sediments to the AND-1B core site throughout the Pliocene; the low nuclide concentrations therefore preclude large-scale or periodic land exposure of much of the Transantarctic Mountain region or the southernmost part of the Wilkes Subglacial Basin Since model-data comparison in this region is ambiguous it is designated “least confident” due to the conflicting geologic reconstructions This region is designated “most confident” due to the multi-proxy agreement of dynamic grounding line behavior which likely influenced ice sheet dynamics across this time period but are not physical processes currently represented by the model All model simulations produce periodic glacial advance and retreat across the Weddell continental shelf; only extreme end members with high sensitivity to ocean temperatures and MICI parameters do not expand sufficiently Model-data comparison in this region is ‘least confident’ given the lack of data coverage across the Weddell shelf and the relatively unconstrained timing of trough mouth fan formation attributed to increased precipitation during warm interglacials Four locations reveal episodes of Pliocene ice thickening: Sør Rondane Mountains in Dronning Maud Land ( + 400 m between 2.5 and 3 Ma before 4 Ma); Grove Mountains in Princess Elizabeth Land ( + 150–220 m at least once before 3.5 Ma); McMurdo Sound-Dry Valleys area in Victoria Land ( + 700 at least once before 2.8 Ma); and Shackleton range in Coats Land ( + 750 m at least once before 3 Ma) relating to precipitation and accumulation The only location with sufficiently detailed cosmogenic nuclide data to construct an ice cover frequency curve is currently the Mt None of the model simulations produce a similar pattern of cyclic exposure and ice cover frequency as indicated by the transect of cosmogenic nuclide exposure ages at the Pirrit Hills This model-data comparison is designated ‘least confident’ primarily given the coarse-resolution model grid size which complicates model-data comparisons but also due to the fact that the Pirrit Hills ice thickness frequency dataset integrates glacial fluctuations across the last ~5 Myr while our modeled ice thickness frequency curves reflect ice sheet behavior during the Pliocene only Model output can be accessed via Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12657538) including model fields of ice sheet thickness and velocity and calculations of ice sheet volume and global sea-level equivalents The ice sheet model code is from ref. 2 The specific version used here is available from the author upon request Pliocene and Eocene provide best analogs for near-future climates The Paris Climate Agreement and future sea level rise from Antarctica Sensitivity of Pliocene ice sheets to orbital forcing Simulating the Antarctic ice sheet in the late-Pliocene warm period: PLISMIP-ANT an ice-sheet model intercomparison project Modeling the oxygen isotope composition of the Antarctic ice sheet and its significance to Pliocene sea level Antarctic climate and ice-sheet configuration during the early Pliocene interglacial at 4.23 Ma Transient variability of the Miocene Antarctic Ice Sheet smaller than equilibrium differences High climate model dependency of Pliocene Antarctic ice-sheet predictions Dumitru, O. 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Cheyenne: HPE/SGI ICE XA System (University Community Computing). https://doi.org/10.5065/D6RX99HX (2019) Download references Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences Department of Earth Science and Engineering provided interpretations of the εNd dataset for model-data comparison The authors declare no competing interests Nature Communications thanks Johannes Sutter reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations Download citation DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51205-z Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: a shareable link is not currently available for this article Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science the newest store in Barry Gruchow’s growing list of men’s casual to formal wear stores your eyes fall first on a helmeted mannequin black Triumph motorcycle from Red River Triumph in Moorhead strong techno music beats from the store’s audio system The message is clear: youth and masculinity will be served at 4600 32nd Ave sharp Scandinavian quality to the layout and decor but at the same time a warmth that comes with neatly hung racks of woven wool sport coats and suits smartly patterned and richly hued silk ties Owner Barry Gruchow is suitably proud of the new shop devoted to made-to-measure closing by Atelier Munro Gruchow says the Amsterdam-headquartered firm takes customization up a notch for Halberstadt’s customers It’s like a five-week turnaround,” Gruchow said Wednesday there’s over a thousand different fabrics and styles that they could” use to design that “They can configure the design of the garment to whatever they want There are also plenty of garments available to determine a close fit there might be a little bit of I hope this fits then modify (it) with measurements and put it into the system to ensure a proper fit.” Tailoring is also done with off-the-rack suits and sportcoats “but this just takes it up a notch and you can get really All of the Halberstadt’s team members are trained to properly chalk up garments Atelier Munro is only offered at the Blu 32 business district shop “We wanted to give the line the attention it deserved,” Gruchow said but held its grand opening celebration on Thursday Gruchow also owns Halberstadt’s on Broadway in downtown Fargo two shops in Bismarck (downtown and the Kirkwood Mall) (The Halberstadt’s at Fargo’s West Acres mall has a different owner The downtown Fargo and 32nd Avenue South Halberstadt’s have adjacent Your Day By Nicole bridal shops Halbertadt’s carries a wide variety of brands including Hart Shaffner Marx suits (which can be custom fitted) Gruchow also talked a bit about fashion in general And the business world is now business casual But there’s always a little bit of a renaissance that happens over the course of time where people get more interested in getting dressed up and want to have that type of wardrobe Are weddings and other events a big part of your business A lot of reasons … maybe it’s not a full suit and tie but for them (customers) to elevate a little bit” in their fashion choices Do you anticipate more business with the return to back to the office The fall is always a little bit more suit-and-tie wardrobe in the workplace In the summer there’s a lot of polos and casual wear to be had people get a little more excited about throwing on a sportcoat what are the fashions that are most popular we do a lot of casual wear with certain brands that we carry Just because that’s something that people can wear to the office or they can wear it on the weekends if they have an event that they need to dress up for we sell a lot of sport coats with denim or slacks I think we’re seeing a lot of that from the younger crowd And when they see something that catches their eye Can you make this for me?’ I think with the younger (customers) we try to match somebody’s comfort zone with their style There’s ways to obviously create their own style or vibe in the more casual feel Are there things you’re seeing (elsewhere) that you expect to start appearing in the Upper Midwest Double-breasted jackets and suitcoats are kind of coming in hot and a lot of earth tones as far as colors go Stuff that’s not going to need dry-cleaning Liberal ArtsStudents travel to Italy to develop multicultural and linguistic skillsPenn State students traveled to Prato in May as part of an embedded programPenn State students gathered on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — This past May, Penn State students traveled to Prato, Italy, in the Multilingual and Intercultural Communication in Italy embedded program in the College of the Liberal Arts The two-week trip abroad was open to students enrolled in SPAN 210N IT 210N or PORT 210N and explored the fundamental components of the intersection of language and culture through humanities and social science The course, taught by Lauren Halberstadt, associate teaching professor of Spanish, focuses on linguistic strategies for succeeding in multilingual situations, as well as intercultural communication practices for navigating new environments. This is the second year in a row that Halberstadt has taken her class to Italy “I designed the program to intentionally target diverse experiences in multiple language and cultures in a very intercultural city,” Halberstadt said the students learn how multiple cultures intersect They are prepared by the in-residence course in the spring semester for travel in May that is curated to push their expectations and expand their knowledge This group really leaned into each and every opportunity in a genuine way!” Throughout the trip, students learned about Italian language and culture, as well as how to develop their skills in multilingualism. The students shared photos from their trip on the @mictravelpsu Instagram account a third-year student majoring in Spanish and public relations discussed some of the educational opportunities they had to help expand this knowledge “We took a class at the Monash University Prato Centre where my classmates and I learned more about the Italian language and the cultural and historical aspects of Italy,” Laing said Isabella Salcedo a fourth-year student in the integrated undergraduate-graduate degree program in Spanish and human resources and employment relations explained another unique educational opportunity had by the class “We also did many cultural activities through Monash University including cultural exchanges with Australian and Italian students,” Salcedo said On top of the various educational experiences students had the opportunity to explore and embrace Italian culture throughout their trip students additionally traveled to Florence Whether it was an event the class had planned or exploring the town during their free time students were able to experience a lot of what Italy has to offer “We did a variety of activities including tours of major art museums such as the Uffizi Galleries toured local textile factories and toured a biscotti factory,” Salcedo said “We also visited a female-owned winery to learn about the process in which the wine is made.” While students reminisced on several of their favorite memories including the various trips and cultural experiences they had they explained that the connections they made stood out above all a fourth-year student majoring in marketing and minoring in Spanish elaborated on the friendships she made through the trip “My favorite memory from the trip was spending time with all of the amazing people I met through the class,” Howard said I wouldn’t have met some of my lifelong friends and it truly wouldn’t have been the same without them.” Students also said that this trip gave them numerous skills that they will utilize for the rest of their lives she gained both practical and professional skills “This trip allowed me to travel to another continent navigate Italian public transportation and create new cultural and educational experiences in another country,” Laing said “I hope to use my majors to pursue a career in international affairs their experience abroad allowed them to explore their studies deeper and develop skills they can use both in the classroom and in their future careers “Since part of my Spanish degree is about cultural immersion this helped me learn to adapt quickly to a new environment,” Salcedo said I knew little to nothing about Italian culture aside from the stereotypes you hear growing up so learning to navigate a new setting with little language and cultural awareness was a skill I’m glad I acquired.” students were incredibly grateful they had the opportunity to study abroad and encouraging other Penn State students to take the chance if the opportunity presents itself “The advice I would give to students interested in traveling would be to do it!” Howard said “Study abroad and take the embedded program — you will not regret it and I am incredibly thankful for the opportunity.” “Make room in your undergraduate plans for study abroad,” Laing added personal growth and professional development that makes you a much better person and future young professional There are all kinds of programs for every area of study.” Students interested in the spring 2025 Prato, Italy, embedded program should email Halberstadt at lyp5028@psu.edu The Career Enrichment Network empowers Liberal Arts students to explore engage and define their career journey through diverse career development opportunities Students can meet with a career coach to explore careers the Liberal Arts Alumni Mentor Program and more the Career Enrichment Network provides Liberal Arts students the opportunity to apply for funding to help support participation in many of these experiences Wi — While many people will be focused on how their food tastes today some woke up early this morning with a pig skin on their mind and Craig Halberstadt's annual pre-Thanksgiving Turkey Bowl football game has been a lasting tradition have met near Shoop Street in Racine to play each other in a game of football these men have been playing Turkey Bowls in Racine "I don't even call them anymore," Botzau said While the match-up isn't quite Bears versus Packers Time has passed and that means the cast has changed a bit but that's something that the players embrace "You've got guys that you've known since you were ten and you've got their grandkids coming out to play They hope to continue the tradition for years to come Stream local news and weather 24/7 by searching for “TMJ4” on your device Available for download on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and more. 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Read our policy By 2024-07-25T14:06:00+01:00 Daimler Truck is fitting photovoltaic modules to the roof of the new global parts distribution centre (PDC) it is building in Halberstadt the solar panel system will eventually cover 90% of a total roof area around 250,000 sq.m It is expected to generate more than 20m kWh of electricity per year “The new logistics site has been planned for CO2 neutral operation from the outset and the energy concept completely dispenses with fossil fuels,” said Stefan Rödler adding that it will be one of the largest rooftop photovoltaic systems in Europe The photovoltaic roof system will eventually provide 20m kWh of electricity per year The PDC will be heated using electric heat pumps which bring the heat into the building via floor heating systems Energy efficiency will also be achieved through low heating water temperatures and the storage effect of the industrial floors an energy storage system of around 2,000 kWh is planned which will be supplemented by a further storage system at a later date The logistics hall at Daimler Truck’s Halberstadt PDC  Rapid progress Construction firm Goldbeck started work on the facility for Daimler Truck in October last year and has built two large each around 200 meters wide and 600 meters long One is for inbound parts and one for outbound Recycling halls and an office building are also now on site Around a third of the logistics hall floor has already been concreted (90,000 sq.m) and more than half of the hall façade has been completed In the coming months Daimler Truck will build up its high-bay warehouse It is one of the biggest logistics projects in company’s history The facility will have a gross built up area of 270,000 sq.m and operations will be phased in during 2025 to supply 20 regional logistics centres worldwide with parts for Mercedes-Benz trucks These in turn will supply the regional dealers with the parts The PDC will receive 300,000 different line items from 2,600 suppliers when fully operational It will also use the latest storage and conveyor technology for the timely retrieval of parts The truckmaker said that fast and comprehensive parts supply will enable vehicle fleets to spend as much time as possible in operation *In other related efforts to decarbonise logistics Mercedes-Benz GenH2 fuel cell trucks are being used in operations at five logistics companies: Air Products The five GenH2 Trucks will be deployed in different long-haul applications on specific routes in Germany and refueled at designated liquid hydrogen filling stations (sLH2) in Wörth am Rhein and in future also in the Duisburg area Toyota Motor Europe’s head of parts supply chain reveals how the company tackles service parts challenges with reliability and efficiency Volkswagen Group has signed a two-year contract with Unipart Signite to support its SAP service parts warehouse management tool in the UK Stellantis is working with online used parts distributor B-Parts to move its expanded range of Sustainera service parts to dealers across the North America Site powered by Webvision Cloud You don't have permission to access the page you requested What is this page?The website you are visiting is protected.For security reasons this page cannot be displayed It is with great sadness that we have learned that Professor Victor Halberstadt passed away on Friday 13 September 2024 He was Professor of Public Sector Economics at the Department of Economics of Leiden Law School He also held many other public positions and left his mark on both national and international governance and politics as well as on the business and cultural sector With the passing of Professor Victor Halberstadt the university has lost a distinctive and erudite person he bridged the gap between scholarship and practice Many generations of students and staff will remember him as a pillar of support in their career choices Many administrators at our university also often benefitted from his words of wisdom Professor Halberstadt was involved with the Fellowship Stichting (NIAS/KNAW) and was a member of the Advisory Board of NIOD (KNAW) He was affiliated to Koç University in Istanbul and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore as a member of the Supervisory Board from 2005 he was President of the International Institute of Public Finance he fulfilled an important advisory role from 1972 to 2004 as a Crown-appointed Member of the Social and Economic Council (SER) He was also a Crown-appointed Member of the Defence Affairs Advisory Council Professor Halberstadt also held numerous advisory and supervisory positions in the business sector He was Chairman of the Daimler-Chrysler International Advisory Board (1995-2005) a member of the International Advisory Board of Chugai Ltd and was a member of the Advisory Board of the Goldman Sachs Group He was also a supervisory director for Dutch corporations including ING Positions held in the cultural sector included Director of Concertgebouw (1988-2011) Member of the Board of Trustees of the Dutch National Opera and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Boekman Foundation Professor Halberstadt was also a driving force behind the Bilderberg Meetings and was Honorary Secretary-General from 1980 to 2000 From 1990 he was a member of the Faculty of the World Economic Forum He demonstrated his commitment to NGOs as Vice-Chair for the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) and as a member of the Population Council Professor Halberstadt was a renowned economist within the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) he resolved a cabinet crisis concerning a budget deficit Professor Halberstadt was appointed Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion and in November 2018 he was awarded the Cross of Honour of the Order of the House of Orange This distinction was in recognition of his long-time services to the Royal Household at the beginning of this century he assisted Queen Máxima with her introduction to Dutch society Leiden Law School and the Department of Economics are deeply indebted to Professor Victor Halberstadt We offer his family and friends our sincere condolences at this time of sadness — Although the Lions did not make it to the Super Bowl this year Michiganders still have someone to root for Rory is a Big Lake Humane Society rescue pup in Muskegon County He’s going to be in this year’s Puppy Bowl The ball of fluff has plenty of energy and is ready to go the distance Rory is a Siberian husky-American pit bull terrier mix with a strong emphasis on "bull." you expect him to turn off at the last moment Halberstadt is Rory’s foster and has been coaching him up The two of them had a lot of films to study He commented on how he sees a lot of one of the Lions star running back in Rory “Probably Montgomery because he's a bull,” Halberstadt said That bull is on Team Fluff in this year’s Puppy Bowl and we've been doing a ton of training with him and he's been in a foster home working on his skills and making some touchdowns this year,” Big Lake Humane Society Executive Director Alexis Robertson said but his foster has done an incredible job of working with him and getting him prepped for the big game “The Puppy Bowl is such an important event not just for our shelter because we have a puppy in it but they focus specifically on bringing light to shelter pets and rescues The mission of spaying and neutering and all the incredible animals in shelters everywhere around the country,” Robertson said Halberstadt can't wait to see all Rory's training pay off “I’ve been telling all my friends at work about him and everything Join Rory's watch party at the Dirty Dog for photos with the star Follow FOX 17: Facebook - X (formerly Twitter) - Instagram - YouTube Greg Halberstadt has signed a one-year contract extension with EHC Chur and will thus stay until the end of the 2025-26 season "Greg has developed steadily over the last few years and has become an important part of our team We are delighted that he is continuing on this path with us," Head of Sports Björn Gerhard said Halberstadt appeared in 37 regular-season games for Chur this season While Halberstadt will stay, six players will leave the team. Lukas Rubin, Samuele Pozzorini, Emilijus Krakauskas, Maurin Tosio, Timo Demuth, and Josselin Dufey will all no longer figure on EHC Chur's roster next season It remains to be seen where they will end up next season Metrics details The later phase of the Central European Early Neolithic witnessed a rise in collective lethal violence to a level undocumented up to this date This is evidenced by repeated massacres of settled communities of the Linearbandkeramik (ca the first full farming culture in this area Skeletal remains of several dozen victims of this prehistoric warfare are known from different sites in Germany and Austria Here we show that the mass grave of Halberstadt a new mass fatality site from the same period reveals further and so far unknown facets of Early Neolithic collective lethal violence almost exclusively adult male and non-local population sample was killed by targeted blows to the back of the head indicating a practice of systematic execution under largely controlled conditions followed by careless disposal of the bodies This discovery significantly increases current knowledge about warfare-related violent behaviour in Early Neolithic Central Europe Into this tableau of LBK collective lethal violence and mass burial we add a new site: the mass grave of Halberstadt It contained the skeletal remains of irregularly deposited and severely traumatised individuals Careful excavation of the block-lifted feature and subsequent laboratory analyses revealed some similarities to the other LBK mass fatality sites also significant and currently unique deviations from them this study adds important and previously unavailable information to the discussion of the scope and frequency of Early Neolithic violence and its contextual interpretation Individual skeletons have been coloured and numbered for better visual differentiation the mass grave of Halberstadt clearly represents a population sample different from all other attritional or catastrophic LBK burial assemblages known so far The clear dominance of younger adult males and the absence of children have to be especially stressed indicate important contextual differences from the other sites of LBK mass burial and/or collective lethal violence Examples of cranial perimortem blunt force trauma identified in the mass grave. a Trauma in the right half of the frontal bone in ind. 4. b Trauma in the left parietal bone of ind. 9. c Trauma in the midline of the occipital bone (near bregma) in ind. 5. d Trauma in the left half of the occipital bone of ind. 7. e, f Trauma in the right half of the occipital bone in ind. 9. Panels a–e in ectocranial view; panel f in endocranial view. Scale bar length is 2 cm Compilation of the approximate locations of cranial trauma Signature size represents general trauma size (large vs darker shading represents securely identified trauma Signature locations indicate approximate points of initial impact Numbers indicate the affected individuals with skulls preserved (ind Examples of postcranial perimortem trauma identified in the mass grave a Shaft fracture of the right femur in ind b Shaft fracture of the right humerus in ind Examples of aberrant positioning of perimortem fractured limbs In situ positions of the perimortem fractured right upper limb in ind 6 (humerus; yellow) and right lower limb in ind Upon excavation, several major skeletal elements were already missing (Fig. 1) 2 is missing the bones of its right leg and most parts of the left lower leg while the proximal part of the left tibia is still present and articulated 6 the left leg bones including the left pelvic bone and sacrum all bones distal to the fifth cervical vertebra are absent There is a possibility that the remains labelled ind 9 are actually part of the same individual but the distance between these partially preserved remains and their different orientation rather suggest that they belong to different individuals as all other major body parts actually present in the feature were still articulated upon deposition Examples of animal damage to the bones from the mass grave a Typical rodent gnawing damage above the right orbit in the skull of ind b Carnivore gnawing damage to the distal right tibia in ind c Carnivore gnawing damage to the proximal left tibia in ind Assuming that the regular settlement burials represent the local population this suggests that the individuals in the mass grave were largely non-local to the site Both the Sr and the C and N isotope data characterise the individuals in the mass grave as clearly distinct from the settlement burial population While such wounds may have been received during massacres either as an active participant or as a surviving victim they may also stem from interpersonal violence on an individual or familial level there is now ample evidence that collective violence was a major societal issue at least for later LBK populations This interpretation is supported by the isotope data which show that the males in the disorganised mass grave differed from the carefully interred settlement burials regarding geographical origins and dietary habits Judging from their bioarchaeological profiles especially the radiogenic 87Sr/86Sr ratios of their enamel the killed men can be regarded as non-locals originating from outside the regular marriage networks and/or recruitment areas of the Halberstadt LBK community Carnivore damage has also been found in the skeletal remains at Asparn23 which indicates a time of exposure of the bodies the Halberstadt dead were collected into the mass grave a short while after death as the bodies still retained most of their anatomical integrity upon deposition As all securely identified cases of carnivore damage in the Halberstadt sample have been found right at the edge of the grave feature in three different places it is conceivable that the bodies were not covered completely at first the distal parts of some limbs remained accessible to carnivores and were gnawed off at the edge of the feature the carnivore damage occurred prior to deposition in the mass grave Although it may be impossible to differentiate some sort of sacrifice from more pragmatic practises such as execution the overall evidence gleaned from the mass grave of Halberstadt supports a pragmatic rather than ritualistic interpretation in direct comparison to the other LBK mass fatality sites Asparn and Kilianstädten show that warfare and the destruction of whole communities were indeed part of Early Neolithic life the mass grave of Halberstadt now elucidates further aspects of violent actions and reactions during the time of the first farming culture of Early Neolithic Central Europe After the mass grave was unexpectedly discovered during regular excavation prior to construction work the top layer of skeletal remains was exposed on site to assess the overall size and complexity of the burial feature Already displaced bone fragments were collected by the field team It was then decided to block-lift the complete feature in one piece to enable a later detailed bioarchaeological dissection of the block-lifted mass grave under controlled indoor conditions The subsequent further excavation and disassembly of the feature was carried out in the central finds depot of the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology in Halle (Saale) Germany and focused on osteologically defined individuals until all skeletal remains and other finds had been removed Strontium isotope analysis followed previously established protocols68 Enamel samples were cut from tooth crowns and all surfaces and dentine were removed using diamond-coated dental cutting and drilling equipment The samples were then powdered in an agate mortar pre-treated with buffered acetic acid and ashed Sr was separated under clean-room conditions using Eichrom Sr-Spec resin Sr concentrations were determined by Quadrupole-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (Q-ICP-MS) and 87Sr/86Sr ratios by High-Resolution Multi Collector-ICP-MS (Neptune) at the Curt-Engelhorn-Centre for Archaeometry in Mannheim Raw data were corrected according to the exponential mass fractionation law to 88Sr/86Sr = 8.375209 Blank values were lower than 10 pg Sr during the whole clean lab procedure The NBS 987 and Eimer & Amend (E & A) standards run along with the human samples yielded 87Sr/86Sr ratios of 0.71024 ± 0.00001 and demineralised in 10 ml of 0.5 N HCl at initially 4 °C and later at room temperature for 14 days rinsed to neutrality and reacted with 10 ml of 0.1 M NaOH for 24 h at 4 °C rinsed again to neutrality and gelatinised in 4 ml of acidified H2O (pH 2–3) for 48 h at 75 °C Insoluble particles were separated using EZEE filter separators C and N contents and the stable isotopic compositions were determined in triplicates using a Thermo Flash 2000 Organic Elemental Analyzer coupled to a Thermo Finnigan Mat 253 mass spectrometer at the Department of Applied and Analytical Palaeontology Institute of Geosciences at the University Mainz The raw data were calibrated against the international Standards USGS 40 and USGS 41 Interspersed samples of IAEA CH6 gave a mean δ13C value of −10.35 ± 0.01‰ and IAEA N2 gave a mean δ15N value of 20.61 ± 0.06‰ All relevant data are included in the manuscript and the supplementary information The human skeletal remains recovered from the mass grave (A6500/D879; feature 100202) are housed at the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt in Halle (Saale) Germany under catalogue numbers 6500:100202:1-154 The linear pottery culture: diversity in uniformity (eds) The First Farmers of Central Europe (Oxbow ‘Adaptive cycles’ and climate fluctuations: a case study from linear pottery culture in western Central Europe Genetic discontinuity between local hunter-gatherers and central Europe’s first farmers Ancient DNA from European early Neolithic farmers reveals their Near Eastern affinities Ancient DNA reveals key stages in the formation of Central European mitochondrial genetic diversity Tracing the genetic origin of Europe’s first farmers reveals insights into their social organization Crop manuring and intensive land management by Europe’s first farmers Community differentiation and kinship among Europe’s first farmers On the relevance of the European Neolithic Bioarchaeological contributions to the study of violence Linearbandkeramische Gräberfelder in Bayern (Marie L Menschenopfer–Zerstörungsrituale mit Kannibalismus–Schädelkult: Die aussergewöhnliche bandkeramische Anlage von Herxheim in der Südpfalz Anthropologisch-traumatologische Untersuchung der menschlichen Skelettreste aus dem bandkeramischen Massengrab bei Talheim Evidence of genocide 7000 BP–Neolithic paradigm and geo-climatic reality The massacre mass grave of Schöneck-Kilianstädten reveals new insights into collective violence in Early Neolithic Central Europe Eine archäologische Spurensuche (eds Meller War Before Civilization (Oxford University Press How War Began (Texas A&M University Press Auswertung und Gedanken zur Deutung im Kontext der Linienbandkeramik Burials within settlements of the Linienbandkeramik and Stichbandkeramik cultures of Central Europe On the social construction of death in Early-Neolithic society Die linienbandkeramischen Gräberfelder von Derenburg “Meerenstieg II” und Halberstadt “Sonntagsfeld” Paläodemografische und epidemiologische Untersuchungen an neolithischen und frühbronzezeitlichen Bestattungen aus dem Mittelelbe-Saale-Gebiet im Kontext populationsdynamischer Prozesse in The Routledge Handbook of the Bioarchaeology of Human Conflict (eds Knüsel Cannibalism in the Linear Pottery Culture: the Human Remains from Herxheim (Archaeopress Violence and Slavery in Prehistory (eds Parker Pearson in Manual of Forensic Taphonomy (eds Pokines Strontium isotopes from the earth to the archaeological skeleton: a review in Biological Anthropology of the Human Skeleton (eds Katzenberg Early Neolithic diet and animal husbandry: stable isotope evidence from three Linearbandkeramik (LBK) sites in Central Germany defend (repeat): the archaeology and ethnohistory of warfare on the North Pacific Rim Isotopic signatures and hereditary traits: snapshot of a Neolithic community in Germany Survival of a multiple skull trauma: the case of an early neolithic individual from the LBK enclosure at Herxheim (Southwest Germany) ‘Sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat’: the St Brice’s Day massacre and the isotopic analysis of human bones from St John’s College The Eulau eulogy: bioarchaeological interpretation of lethal violence in Corded Ware multiple burials from Saxony-Anhalt Die menschlichen Skelettfunde aus der neolithischen Totenhütte von Benzingerode Anthropologische Untersuchungen an den Bestattungen eines Kollektivgrabs der Bernburger Kultur Rib lesions in skeletons from Early Neolithic sites in Central Germany: on the trail of tuberculosis at the onset of agriculture Weymouth (Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society Isotopic and genetic analyses of a mass grave in Central California: implications for precontact hunter-gatherer warfare Blunt force cranial trauma in the Cambodian killing fields Symbole und Symbolverwendungen in Ethnologie Killing of captured enemies: a cross-cultural study Patterns of mortuary practice associated with genocide Mass cannibalism in the linear pottery culture at Herxheim (Palatinate Cleaning the dead: Neolithic ritual processing of human bone at Scaloria Cave Violence and society in the deep human past Identification of Pathological Conditions in Human Skeletal Remains (Academic Press Preacher, K. J. & Briggs, N. E. Calculation for Fisher’s exact test: an interactive calculation tool for Fisher’s exact probability test for 2 x 2 tables. http://quantpsy.org/fisher/fisher.htm (2001) in Migrations in Prehistory and Early History Stable Isotopes and Population Genetics (eds Kaiser Dietary reconstruction in migration period central Germany: a carbon and nitrogen isotope study Tatort Talheim (Städtische Museen Heilbronn Download references We are indebted to Anke Herrmann and the on-site excavation team as well as Olaf Schröder—all of the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt Germany—for facilitating the examination of the block-lifted feature The analysis of the mass grave was funded by the same institution Sigrid Klaus and Bernd Höppner for help with sample preparation and strontium isotope analysis at the Curt-Engelhorn-Centre for Archaeometry Mannheim Germany and Michael Maus for stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis at the Department for Applied and Analytical Palaeontology at the University of Mainz Ute Blach and Ronny Friedrich carried out radiocarbon dating at the Klaus-Tschira-Laboratory for Radiometric Dating Methods Ronny Friedrich also provided further information and kind assistance in analysing the results of radiocarbon dating State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt/State Museum of Prehistory Center of Natural and Cultural Human History Integrative Prehistory and Archaeological Science excavated the block-lifted feature and collected samples; O.K. provided background information and facilitated the in situ excavation and analysis; C.M. provided and analysed comparative data; C.M analysed primary data and wrote the manuscript with input from all other authors Publisher's note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations Download citation DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04773-w Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. 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Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker putting this part of her personal odyssey into poetry was a natural process Halberstadt felt the words that came to her would be cathartic but what the Dana-Farber patient didn’t expect was that her cancer-related writing would reach – and move – so many others Since 2014, more than 40 of Halberstadt’s poems, including those focused on her ongoing care at Dana-Farber, have appeared in the Poetry and Medicine section of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Each new piece is accessed by thousands of online readers as well as print subscribers to the peer-reviewed medical journal Doctors across the country regularly email Halberstadt to praise and comment on her work including fellow cancer survivors with whom she enjoys continuing correspondence after more than a half-century as a professional writer Halberstadt recently achieved a new career milestone: her first book deal It has been a surprising chain of events for the 79-year-old grandmother and Halberstadt is thrilled that her poetry appears to be helping others as it helps her “I always feel that a poem is at its most complete after you send it out into the world,” says Halberstadt a Bronx native and longtime Newton resident who trained as an artist and anthropologist “When you find out that someone has been touched by it believes her poems have resonated with readers because they eloquently describe “a range of cancer-related realities” such as change “Carol’s poems give her cancer ‘odyssey’ a voice a woman – and all those voices are being heard through her poetry we are forever changed — and from these challenges we can be healed by sharing O’Regan and Halberstadt’s oncologists agree that just as her poetry inspires others it provides a way of coping with her cancers “Writing gave Carol a sense that cancer and its treatment had not taken away her creativity,” says David C. Fisher, MD, who has treated Halberstadt’s lymphoma since her fall 2016 diagnosis. “Reading these poems helps other patients recognize that they are not alone in their feelings and experiences.” Pasi Jänne, MD, PhD, her thoracic oncologist adds that “it also helps channel her normal and natural anxiety associated with a cancer diagnosis Carol communicates her thoughts and feelings through her poetry.” associate editor of Poetry and Medicine at JAMA has long encouraged Halberstadt to seek a wider audience This opportunity came recently when another supporter connected Halberstadt with Whirlybird Press in Shawnee which plans to publish a book of her poetry “Sometimes I’ll joke with Suzanne about when I’m ‘having’ a poem Make an Appointment Our Online Second Opinion program lets adult patients from all over the world receive expert second opinions from Dana-Farber oncologists without leaving home Get a Second Opinion Online Get our weekly newsletter that'll tell you exactly what you need to know in the cancer world WA — Washington State Department of Commerce Director Lisa Brown recently announced two new appointments to key leadership roles in the growing agency’s Office of Economic Development and Competitiveness Shannon Halberstadt came on board June 1 as Director of Creative Economy sector development Expanding and deepening Commerce’s team serving Washington’s small businesses Linda Womack also joined Commerce June 1 as Managing Director of Small Business and Community Support Shannon Halberstadt will cultivate partnerships and policy to grow creative businesses and jobs in Washington Most recently Halberstadt was the Campaign Manager for Keep Music Live engaging over 4200 donors to provide Covid-19 emergency relief funding to small where she led efforts to help Washington’s working artists of all disciplines building thriving careers offering grant awards and professional development resources Her experience also includes roles as Executive Director of Spokane Arts Pacific Northwest Executive Director at The Recording Academy (GRAMMY’s) “Washington state’s creative economy is among the strongest in our nation I’m honored to join the talented team at Commerce and look forward to working closely with creative sector industry leaders to support and grow this important sector that brings so much richness vitality and sense of place to communities all over the state,” Halberstadt said Linda Lee Womack served as the Director of the (MBDA) Minority Business Development Agency – Washington Business Center operated by the City of Tacoma’s Community and Economic Development Department she has been responsible for targeting minority-owned enterprises with technical and strategic business consulting to increase their capacity to create and retain jobs minority-owned businesses in the region secured over $290 million in contracting and financing opportunities The Washington Business Center was recognized by U.S Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo as operating one of the best performing business center in the country serving under-resourced business communities Prior to her role as the business center director Linda operated a boutique Korean interpretation/translation firm specializing in cultural brokering Womack spent 12 years in Asia working as a go-to-market and global marketing strategist with Samsung and the Korean Tourism Organization’s international convention team to increase their presence and to attract foreign direct investments globally Womack received her Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Washington and holds an MBA from the Helsinki School of Economics (Aalto University School of Business) “Commerce is results driven and I have always admired the agency’s work in how they engage and support businesses in all sectors to grow and remain competitive,” Womack said and I am elated to join them; this is a dream role and I am looking forward to working with my new colleagues in the Office of Economic Development and Competitiveness and across the organization to serve our small business communities in every region of the state.” Shannon.halberstadt@commerce.wa.gov Linda.womack@commerce.wa.gov © 2025 Washington State Department of Commerce travelogue—a hybrid form—"Young Heroes of the Soviet Union: A Memoir and a Reckoning" considers what it means to be a gay Jewish refugee from the USSR Halberstadt came to America at age nine and returned to Russia to meet his father one of Stalin’s personal bodyguards and a member of the KGB Halberstadt discusses the idea of recurrence:  history returning to haunt him An excerpt from “Young Heroes of the Soviet Union: A Memoir and a Reckoning" by Alex Halberstadt 1 The Bodyguard The plane pitched to the left and began to descend A diorama flashed into view through a break in the cloud cover: low cabins standing in puddles of pea-green grass a pond and a sluiceway and some obsolete factory buildings dreaming in pastureland a linoleum labyrinth lit dimly by fluorescents was watched over by soldiers barely out of their teens who leaned languidly against the walls I waited beside a church group from Michigan half a dozen families in pristine white sneakers who joked heartily with one another as though they were waiting out a lull at the Department of Motor Vehicles back home their American sense of inviolability reassured me was shared by many Soviet immigrants returning to the motherland: the worry that the gates won’t open again when it’s time to leave somehow familiar faces—faces professionally immune to interpretation—told me that liberties I hadn’t questioned the previous morning were now granted and revoked at the whim of these men a category of traveler the customs men regarded with suspicion and possibly envy I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and strained to pick up scraps of conversation I stepped up to the window and slid my passport under the glass When his eyes moved across the column of text that read “Place of Birth: Russia,” the corners of his mouth widened into a foreshadowing of a grin My father had been smoking since he was sixteen He was remarried and had a college-age daughter and had never recovered completely from the heart attack he’d suffered nearly fifteen years earlier He said he would quit “when things get easier” and that he was “crazy about cigarettes.” We both knew things wouldn’t get easier and that he wasn’t going to get any less crazy My father liked a brand of vodka called Peter the Great and on that first day in Moscow I drank enough to begin liking it My father and I hadn’t seen each other in seven years thinking of the way some men in their late fifties begin to look elderly almost overnight only his temples were grayer and the lines around the eyes more pronounced We spent nearly the entire day talking in the kitchen but to me our voices sounded tentative and oddly formal we’d spoken occasionally over a sputtering long-distance phone line and met a handful of times adding up to maybe three or four weeks spent together over two and a half decades our relationship hadn’t been worn into a recognizable shape by familiarity I once again became quiet and strangely passive around my father—a condition exacerbated by my shortage of Russian words to describe adult emotions What I lacked was the ability to put them together in ways that enabled adult modes of conversation: irony And so in my father’s presence I spoke less than I did otherwise and was cowed by my silence which in turn made me feel not only mute but dumb My father liked old films enough to make them his livelihood: he dubbed classic Hollywood and European films into Russian and sold the not entirely legal VHS tapes and DVDs at a storefront in one of the newish strip malls that ringed Moscow Sometimes he was paid—by scrap-metal magnates and natural-gas-company lawyers—to assemble private video collections in loose-leaf binders with titles like “The New Wave” and “Early Hitchcock.” He had been an academic of sorts once but was a business owner now in the fledgling post-perestroika middle class and after a few glasses of vodka he began to recite lines of film dialogue in hilariously accented English: “Whoa filmed on a set that looked like Central Park you can tell that Cyd Charisse and Fred Astaire have fallen in love and just then his eyes looked excitable and impossibly young our awkwardness and odd formality gave way to something like joy—both unfamiliar and childishly primal—and I could tell he felt it too a self-consciousness intruded and the elation was gone and I said nothing more until I remembered that I came to Moscow to find out about the two of them “It’s all pretty boring.” In spite of my discomfort with Russian there behind the chipboard table in his kitchen He responded to my questions with gestures of bodily discomfort His eyes beseeched me to change the subject My father’s first memory of his father was watching him count money They lived in a communal prerevolutionary apartment near the Hotel Metropol alongside families of other state security officers Vassily coaxed the bills into neat stacks and laid them gingerly into a shoe box that he kept on a high closet shelf He never quite figured out how to spend his extravagant major’s salary and lavished much of the money on clothes ordering dozens of monogrammed shirts and gabardine suits from the Kremlin tailors My grandmother Tamara designed women’s clothes for an atelier that furnished the city’s dress shops they looked like one of the smart modern couples from the pages of Harper’s Bazaar a magazine Tamara pried away from a colleague of Vassily’s who lived upstairs and whose job it was to monitor foreign mail It was 1949 and my father was three or four years old It occurred to me that my father’s was a decidedly uncommon set of memories for someone growing up in Moscow in the late 1940s Ninety percent of Moscow’s apartments had no heat and nearly half had no plumbing or running water; in winter people going out for water carried axes along with their buckets to hack through the ice that grew around the public water pumps; workers stacked firewood brought from the countryside on street corners in piles that sometimes grew taller than a building; siblings went to school on alternate days because they shared a single pair of shoes But the Kremlin elite never prided itself on being egalitarian she covered every surface with red and white carnations in cut-crystal vases floral bouffants that gave the room the look of a funeral parlor They dined on caviar and smoked sturgeon sent over as part of Vassily’s rations On New Year’s Eve—the secular Soviet Christmas—Tamara put out porcelain bowls filled with pomegranates and oranges and decorated the tree with tinsel and crystal bells arranging presents and sometimes a pineapple under the bottom branches My father tore the wrapping open after supper on the thirty-first the neighbors gathered around the radio console in the hallway and waited for midnight toasting the New Year with a sparkling wine labeled Soviet Champagne Excerpted from YOUNG HEROES OF THE SOVIET UNION: A Memoir and a Reckoning so your donation is critical to KCRW's music programming FLASH SALE: Snag The OG Black Zip-Up designed by LA artist Chuy Hartman— inspired by the 24/7 service we provide to the LA community ends tonight Get the latest from KCRW in your inbox 3x a week AdministrationGeoff Halberstadt named Liberal Arts’ senior director of developmentApril 24 — Geoff Halberstadt has been named senior director of development for the Penn State College of the Liberal Arts Halberstadt has worked for the University’s Division of Development and Alumni Relations for nine years beginning as an intern before serving tenures as assistant director (2011-2014) and associate director (2014-2016) of development in the College of Engineering He joined the College of the Liberal Arts in May 2016 as director of major gifts and had served as the college’s interim director of development since July 2017 having received his bachelor’s degrees in political science and history in 2011 and his master’s degree in higher education (with an emphasis in administration) in 2017 his terrific work with the Alumni Relations and Development team and his relationships with donors to date make him the ideal person to fill this role,” said Susan Welch “I certainly appreciate his willingness to serve as the interim  director for such an extended period His leadership helped us make a great start on the current ‘Greater Penn State’ campaign and I look forward to seeing what the future holds for the college’s development efforts under his guidance.” “Geoff has earned this promotion through his hard work on the current campaign and his collaborative efforts with the dean the college alumni relations and development team and chair of the college’s Development Council  “It’s been a pleasure to work with Geoff and to see him rewarded for his diligence and his development of long-term personal relationships.” “I am very honored and humbled to have this opportunity to serve the College of the Liberal Arts,” Halberstadt said I deeply believe in the inherent value of a liberal arts education I am excited to assume this leadership role and work with the dean the college’s outstanding alumni relations and development team and our dedicated volunteers and donors as we continue to pursue our philanthropic priorities and positively impact the college’s community.” Halberstadt can be reached at glh5028@psu.edu Jeff Halberstadt continues to spend his career under the radar doing what he loves best: bringing men’s fashion to the markets he serves Jeff keeps on pushing the envelope to make sure South Dakota and surrounding states don’t take a back seat to major metropolitan cities It’s helpful that Jeff’s love of travel has allowed him to secure collections that set Halberstadt’s and J.H “Our clients are always sartorial standouts Their peers are constantly in awe to learn that this impeccable clothing was purchased in South Dakota We take great pride in providing this level of luxury goods in the Midwest.” Halberstadt’s was founded in 1975 in St Cloud “My dad had worked for a 20-store Midwest chain called St Clairs before he ventured out on his own he took a much bigger risk than anything I’ve ever done.” Today there are seven locations under the Halberstadt and J.H Jeff had no intention of following his father into the family business He was happily studying south of Paris at a college exchange program when his dad called saying he could use some help in the store To say Jeff loves France is an understatement so hoping to bring the European influences he’d grown to love back home with him knocking on doors to check out warehouses around the garment district heading over to the 1290 building and staring at the directory people thought he was a bit crazy to focus on designer goods Cloud trying to bring fashion from New York Paris and Milan to Minnesota and South Dakota Is it even possible to do that?’ And 40 years ago affluent shoppers reside everywhere; they travel They know what’s happening in fashion and if we don’t give it to them After many years working side by side with his dad Jeff and his brother Tim bought him out in 1999 “I’m proud to have made menswear retailing my life’s work and delighted to have my son Jaime currently in the business with me my grandson Julian will eventually carry the torch.” (Editor’s note: Julian is two years old.) While most independent menswear retailers were struggling to survive the pandemic shutting stores according to state mandates Although managing seven stores in four states during a pandemic can’t be easy “We’re no smarter than anyone else in the business but the pandemic presented a perfect storm: business came back strong in 2021 based on customers’ pent-up demand and weight changes plus the return of social events and travel We were likely gaining market share by default.” recently opened its second location in Omaha & Sons in Sioux Falls with the best of Halberstadt’s Galleria and somehow nailed the right mix With a definite slant toward tailored clothing Isaia and Ring Jacket.” Just back from the Grand Opening Party in Omaha Jeff describes his grandiose notion to bring in the piano player from Bemelmans Bar in NYC’s famed Carlyle Hotel Rob Mosci entertained about 200 guests with fabulous bites and cocktails Jeff plans to grow sales via regular infusions of fresh fashion he admits that his stores are unlikely to sustain the current 30-40 percent increases they’re now experiencing Jeff notes that it’s hard to list best-sellers because everything seems to be working nothing is not selling.” (Editor’s note: which is the sign of a good buyer…) Always on the hunt for exclusive luxury sportswear Jeff is on his way to Pitti Uomo to secure new Italian collections “We’re not great at super casual or athleisure wear; dressy sportswear is where we shine as in Waterville quilted vests and everything from Mark Calder Same with golfwear: we’re selling unique items from Greyson in awesome colors that really stand out on the course What else is needed for independent menswear stores to excel in these precarious times you need the right venue in a compelling location preferably where you can build out to create some cool shops you need a motivated team: if your people truly believe in your vision then they can sell it.” Jeff also points out that clothing that reflects the latest trends and reinforces how empowering wearing tailored clothing can be Jeff replies it’s currently about securing enough wedding suits one of our stores booked 20 large wedding parties With lingering supply chain issues and guys waiting until the last minute to get measured it can be hard to keep up with it.” He also talks about the timing of deliveries “We’ve always tried to land goods closer to season; customers today are buying today and wearing tonight And as much as I wish my inventory were like a Chateau Margaux…it just isn’t so If the industry could figure out how to create four deliveries annually instead of two I think our customers would shop more often and buy more Also on Jeff’s wish list: more fashion-focused in-stock programs “Most of the existing programs are too basic for our customers who already own blue If they invest in too much fashion and get stuck with it like years ago when Peerless created a stock book with 15 colors of a double-breasted gabardine suit But that doesn’t happen often…” Another wish: that the dollar and the euro stay close in value “Some wholesalers have raised prices considerably but I believe this will eventually self-correct customers have not pushed back on higher tickets; they seem to be taking it in stride.” Asked if a change in model wouldn’t jumpstart sales in tailored clothing “There are too few men wearing suits on a daily basis to make a difference So were we to go from side vents to non-vented or from two-button to three I just returned from Paris and Italy: whereas 30 years ago the windows of European clothing shops looked completely different from what’s here in the States The only place I still see truly unique fashion is at the Kentucky Derby…” Nor does he think that adding online shopping would be right for his business at this point in time “I haven’t seen any websites that reflect what I’d like to do We’re not big enough yet to devote enough resources to it “He pushed me to focus on the fashion part of the business which is the main reason we’re still around.” Ron Wurtzburger from Peerless has been another source of inspiration which I don’t think I am… I’ll never forget a dinner I once had with Ronny at the Café Boulud commenting on the product and presentation He is one of the all-time great talents in our industry!” A few little-known facts about Jeff Halberstadt: He was a trumpet player back in the day He loves France and Italy and travels there often He personally trims all his store mannequins and windows He personally curates the stores’ unrivaled playlist He oversees every garment selected every season He has a passion for customizing automobiles and boats (If you ask him about his vintage 1947 Hunter classic wood boat he’ll proudly show you a video of his masterpiece.) He recently customized a Vespa with the J.H & Sons logo and had it flown direct from Italy for a store prop his team and his clients well: “We’re on stage everyday so we must unfailingly deliver an outstanding performance.” On a final note: Jeff claims to be extremely shy “I do my best in the back of the bus,” he tells us The MR Awards is the largest and most prestigious event on the better menswear calendar attended by the industry’s leading retailers more than 50 Lifetime Achievement and Hall of Fame members are invited to return each year The awards will be held at the Edison Ballroom on Sunday you always had a eye for fashion and trends You also knew when one of these trends was over and moved on to the next one Your insight in men’s tailored clothing is unique Congrats on your your People’s Retailer Choice Award! Outstanding business intelect and smart decisions are hard to come by in our world today but Jeff has done a fantastic job and his business growth and success are the result Congratulations Jeff on your Peoples Choice Retailer Award and recognition Although just having met you and ever elegant Marci at Pitti in Florence your savvy gentleman style shone bright and believe this award could not have gone to a nicer person Great pleasure sharing dinners along with your impeccable wine taste Join Our Mailing list She brings over 20 years of experience in financial management and leadership, 19 years of which were spent at Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE: BAH) Henry earned a bachelor of science degree in business administration and management at American University. She began her career at Morgan Stanley as a financial advisor and after 18 months she was chosen by Mitre to lead its corporate finance a more than 30-year technology industry veteran has assumed the role of chief growth officer at Herndon Virginia-based federal information technology services contractor TechSur Solutions he will lead the execution of TechSur’s growth strategies and oversee strategic captures partnerships and business development efforts in support of federal government clients secretary of the Department of Transportation former principal deputy director of national intelligence and a two-time Wash100 awardee have been elected to respectively serve as chairman and vice chairwoman of Mitre’s board of trustees Slater most recently served as interim chairman and has been a member of the The premier source of breaking business news for the government contracting industry to-the-point stories of the most significant contract awards M&A activities and financial results of the sector’s most notable players GovCon Wire is always on top of the most recent contracting sector activity and is updated in real time as the news breaks Important URLs: About us – Government Contracting FAQ – Guest Contributions – 2024 Events Admirers of the avant-garde composer’s work hope the concert in the German church will stay the course – all the way to 2640 When Halberstadt’s St Burchardi church opens its doors for a once-in-a-lifetime musical experience on Monday, some of the spectators streaming into the 11th-century building will have booked their tickets years in advance and crossed continents to get there Because if one thing is certain about this concert has a head start of almost two years and is scheduled to wind up in 2999.) the concert will reach its latest milestone One of the volunteers who keep the project going will plug an additional pipe into the organ It will be the first chord change in two years the 16th since its start more than two decades ago About 150 guests from across Germany China and the Philippines have already paid €200 for a front-row seat though if the chord changes of previous years are anything to go by the church will be filled to its 500-person capacity the change in sound is followed by a respectful five-minute silence and a round of applause “It’s a concert that doesn’t meet conventional expectations of what a concert should be,” says Rainer Neugebauer a member of the foundation that is organising the performance “There’s a long-running debate whether concert is even the right word,” he adds “There is definitely a certain madness to it.” As Slow as Possible was originally composed by Cage for piano in 1985 and then adapted for the organ two years later The instruction to its performers in the title was clear Its 1987 premiere in Metz lasted just over 29 minutes A more literal interpretation was proposed by a group of philosophers and musicians at an organ conference in the Black Forest town of Trossingen in 1998 Proposals for a concert lasting 1,000 years had to be discarded given the uncomfortable echoes of Hitler’s vow to build an empire that would exist for a similar span Financing the project was tricky. An organ that can play all the notes in Cage’s piece needs 89 pipes, which would have proved too costly. Instead, a smaller-scale instrument was built, with nine holes for interchangeable pipes. Playing an organ nonstop for years on end would have been humanly impossible, so the organist had to be mechanical: the air that is pushed into the pipes is blown by an electronic wind machine, the organ’s keys pressed down not by fingers but three little sandbags. The organ’s bellows were fitted on what would have been Cage’s 89th birthday, 5 September 2001, and the concert began – with a 17-month silence, as the scaling of the original score instructed. “It was incredible, a real goosebump moment,” said Kay Lautenbach, a sound engineer at Halberstadt’s Harztheater, whose job it is to enable the project’s continued operation. “You couldn’t hear a thing.” The first chord proper whooshed through the pipes in February 2003, prompting complaints from neighbours that it was too noisy. In 2011, a way was found to reduce the air pressure. “We haven’t had any complaints since then,” says Neugebauer. Of Halberstadt’s 40,000 residents, he calculates, about half don’t even know the concert is still going on. “The other half may not know what to make of it, but they appreciate it’s good publicity for the town.” Some people who seek out St Burchardi church have travelled far and wide. They ask to be locked in the church on their own for hours at a time, or have been granted the wish to spend a night next to the humming organ. “I know people who thought the whole idea was a load of overintellectualised nonsense,” Lautenbach says. “And then they step into the church and they are absolutely enchanted.” Read moreEnsuring As Slow As Possible manages to keep going for another 616 years remains a challenge but all of the “sound plaques” inside the church – one for each year of the piece’s running time – have been sold The latest fundraising scheme is a chance to book a seat for the end of the show on 4 September 2640 (tickets are transferable) The greater challenge will be to win over future generations of volunteers to make sure the concept doesn’t end prematurely Several of the people who originally lobbied for the performance to take place in Halberstadt have already passed away All of the volunteers working on the project know they won’t be alive to hear the final chord “Isn’t that what’s great about it?” says Anneli Borgmann an ecologist from nearby Ströhbeck who joined the foundation in 2021 shortly after the end of a seven-year one-chord sequence “My lifetime is no more than the blink of an eye – I came to terms with that long ago,” she says Cage’s piece speaks of an incredibly stubborn optimism: we will die but this work of art will live on for generations.” This is the archive of The Observer up until 21/04/2025 The Observer is now owned and operated by Tortoise Media The grandson of Stalin’s last surviving bodyguard turns interrogator in this engrossing and tragic family history not my interrogator,” Alex Halberstadt’s grandfather Vassily remarks to him when the writer visits him in the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia in the early 2000s A Soviet-Jewish emigrant who grew up in New York a former major in the secret police who was Stalin’s last surviving bodyguard the 93-year-old offers hints of the horrors he both witnessed and inflicted watery eyes stare into the middle distance; Vassily remains impenetrable He “shrouded himself in the softening ravages of age the creases and lines that erased from his face the look of mastery and even cruelty” discernible in photos of his younger self Halberstadt seeks to decode Vassily’s “roles as perpetrator and victim” but he is forced to concede a defeat of sorts: “I realised how naive I’d been unknowable continent filled with indecipherable ambiguities Vassily had merely permitted me into the vestibule of his past.” Vassily is the enigma at the heart of Halberstadt’s odyssey through his traumatic family history in the now extinct world of the USSR Young Heroes of the Soviet Union digs through Halberstadt’s childhood memories surviving photographs and the reminiscences of his parents and grandparents to unearth the dark bedrock of Soviet history Its finely wrought prose ranges from Moscow in the 1930s to Vilnius in the 50s and New York in the 80s The book is more than just an account of one family’s ordeals: it is an engrossing account of dictatorship and how the toxic legacy they left behind has etched itself into successive generations of Soviet citizens Consumed by Halberstadt’s own longing for meaning it meditates on the power of storytelling to bind our unstable and episodic memories into a coherent narrative – and on the gaps and enigmas that make this impossible Halberstadt is both interrogator and grandson: an “amateur mapmaker” of the lives of his relatives and a determined protagonist who seeks to make their fragmented relationships whole again Halberstadt stands at the confluence of not one but two family tragedies Vassily’s blood-drenched work in the security police drew him away from his wife and child and made him remote and inaccessible the source of “an affliction that spread from parent to child … husband to wife” Ashamed of “carrying the genes of a KGB officer and legally sanctioned killer” sought refuge in an underground world of American films He proved an unfaithful and irresponsible husband Vassily is the source of his father’s moral failings and a cipher for the “father” who looms over the entire history of the Soviet Union: “Fifty years after his death Stalin – the scarecrow of black-and-white newsreels – had reached into my life ‘Statistical marvels’ … Raisa and family on the beach Photograph: Penguin Random HouseOn his mother Halberstadt’s family were Lithuanian Jews who endured the torments of first Soviet Only 5% of Lithuania’s Jews survived the Holocaust Antisemitism lingered in postwar Lithuania bolstered by the discriminatory policies of the Soviet state Promotions were blocked; hateful phrases were muttered in the street; accusations of blood libel still rang out; outside Vilnius families would gather to enjoy picnics on the mass graves of Jews slaughtered by the Wehrmacht Anna “began to sense the weight and darkness of the place and time in which she lived” and years later when the Soviet government finally agreed under international pressure to issue exit visas to the USSR’s Jews When he boarded a flight to Vienna with his mother in 1979 Halberstadt left behind both his native land and his father Read moreHistory is “not the ordered narrative of books” but in the end he opts for the most ordered narrative of all This is the monocausal lament of liberal Russians across the centuries that attributes “the despotism of the country’s rulers and the people’s acquiescence in it” to the “nation’s formative trauma” at the hands of the Mongols The Mongol invasion in the 13th century unleashed “an unstoppable chain reaction – an intergenerational transmission of fear Relationships in Halberstadt’s own life that appeared to hinge on private resentments and misunderstandings in fact turned on monumental forces over which individuals had no control A cyclical history of tyranny and injustice thus binds families in the 20th century with their 13th-century forebears This history also allows Halberstadt to rescue from despair his own relations with his father and Vassily they too experience recurrent nightmares and cry out in their sleep This shared genealogy of trauma binds Halberstadt’s stubbornly incomplete family narrative into another one which dispenses with ambiguity to follow the clean lines of historical interpretation The past becomes an alibi for the present as Halberstadt seeks to reconcile his twin roles of grandson and interrogator: the need to find love and the need to find meaning Young Heroes of the Soviet Union: A Memoir and a Reckoning by Alex Halberstadt is published by Jonathan Cape (£14.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com View of an embroidered sheet of music from the piece Organ2/ASLSP by John Cage Artist Sabine Groschup expands the embroidery with each change of sound the sound of the slowest piece of music in the world This means that the six-sound piece that has been played in the Burchardi Church since February 2022 has become a seven-sound piece HALBERSTADT, Germany — Before American avant-garde composer John Cage died in 1992 one of the only instructions he left for those performing his piece Organ2/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) was One might say "mission accomplished" for the folks with the John Cage Organ Foundation in Halberstadt a small city in central Germany known as the gateway to the Harz mountains art professors and theologians came together in the late 1990s to plan the slowest performance possible of the piece they differed among themselves on what Cage meant with his timing instructions the organist must sometimes go to the loo or sometimes to eat,'" recalls foundation member Rainer Neugebauer "And then one person — he was a theologian — said the organist must play until he dies from the seat.' " The wooden-framed organ that has played the composition since 2001 is a work in progress with metal pipes added or taken away with each chord change sitting across from the organ on a platform the wind from them carried to the organ through an underground pipe The theologian's idea lost traction when the group realized it might be difficult to find an organist willing to die while playing a John Cage composition so they came up with a simpler solution: small sandbags to hold the keys down the group decided the piece would be played for 639 years to mark the time between the construction of the world's first 12-tone Gothic organ in Halberstadt The city donated an abandoned 11th century convent for the performance The wooden-framed organ that has played the composition since then is a work in progress; it's being built as the piece progresses lying across the convent's main hall from the organ on a raised platform are powered electrically (with a backup generator) Sporting a long gray beard and black-framed glasses 70-year-old Neugebauer beckons toward them you came in here and heard only the bellows," he says Rainer Neugebauer heads the John Cage Organ Foundation Halberstadt which manages the 639-year performance of Cage's composition Organ2/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) The foundation has overseen the piece's performance since it began on Sept the 16th chord progression began and will last for two years until the next That's because Cage's piece starts with a short pause that meant the first 17 months of the piece was the sound of air whooshing through the bellows Neugebauer realized with shock that his team had miscalculated this pause — and that it should have lasted 28 months The 639-year project had begun with a mistake "We've made thousands of mistakes," Neugebauer says there was the time he allowed a movie crew to film the organ at night and the crew accidentally knocked one of the pipes loose Or the time when a local politician couldn't make one of the chord-change ceremonies so they delayed it by a couple of weeks — a delay that proved to be the final straw for one of the project founders who fancied himself a Cage purist and who had had enough 'Oh it's good,' and he would laugh about the mistakes we've made," Neugebauer says After all, says Neugebauer, we're talking about a composer whose most famous composition, 4'33" asks performers to sit silently for four minutes and 33 seconds "I think Cage was one of these human beings who was nearest the point to be so free that he was not disappointed when there is no meaning visitor Gabriella Faust stands in front of the organ and closes her eyes "There's something contemplative about this sound," she says how this piece will continue until the year 2640 "Who's going to take care of this organ?" she asks The city of Halberstadt donated this 11th century convent to house the performance until 2640 Neugebauer goes over a list of future threats to the performance: right-wing extremists But those concerns are for future generations He's only in charge of the first of the piece's eight movements Become an NPR sponsor of Terre Haute passed away Saturday February 10 She was a retired teacher for the Vigo County School Corporation having worked at several schools but spending 22 years at Dixie Bee Elementary 1930 in Terre Haute to Raymond and Letha (Wright) Halberstadt Lynn Bolinger (Brent) and Paula Grover (Cary Willis); sons Brian Turner (Jenny Cannaday) and Brent Turner (Britt); grandchildren Lacretia Shelton that the family would like to extend their thanks to for the wonderful care she provided their mother She was preceded in death by her first husband Rita graduated from Indiana State Teachers College with a degree in Education She was a member of the Retired Teachers Association which she did until she was 90 years young She received the Senior Bowler of the Year award in 2013-2014 2024 from 12:00 until 2:30 pm in DeBaun Springhill Chapel with funeral services starting at 2:30 pm in the funeral home with Pastor Scott Johnson officiating Burial will follow in Farmersburg WestLawn Cemetery If friends so desire memorial contributions may be made to the Vigo County Education Foundation Online condolences may be left at www.debaunfuneralhomes.com Get San José Spotlight headlines delivered to your inbox places and events survives by being passed down through generations told through oral accounts or painted on walls living in East San Jose during his beginnings as a community organizer and labor champion and working to bolster the rights of the city’s Mexican American population But despite his brief residence here – later moving to areas like Delano and Salinas where he led his famous farmworker boycotts – Chavez’s legacy has stood the test of time through parks who sits on the Santa Clara County Historical Heritage Commission the distinction between calling San Jose home and making a name for himself elsewhere through his work presents a challenge Historiography is about how the story manages to get told,” Halberstadt said “Somebody once said that there would be no Jesus without St “You have to be careful with your art not to give people a false sense of history; we do that all the time,” Halberstadt said in the May 6 story Halberstadt’s quote was removed in an editorial decision after community outcry Halberstadt claims she’s since penned an apology for upsetting those who took offense but said the comments were made from an historical lens “I should not have framed what I said to you like you would understand history,” Halberstadt said They’re not going to make me angry because they’re angry.” Halberstadt said if she frames Chavez’s legacy through the impact of his community organizing alone that could be comparable to “creating a myth” because oral histories are often unreliable and misremembered But Halberstadt’s apology and explanation aren’t enough said East San Jose Councilmember Magdalena Carrasco She said the commissioner is attempting to erase history and write a new narrative “What does (his length of time here) have anything to do with his contributions You can live in San Jose a lifetime and contribute nothing,” Carrasco told San José Spotlight “It’s not about the number of years that he was here or not It is about who he was during his lifetime what he was able to accomplish and what he has come to represent in history Carrasco said Halberstadt’s comments cut even deeper because she’s in a position of authority and a gatekeeper to the city’s history as a member of the Historical Heritage Commission Carrasco added that the commissioner’s focus on linear timelines is a “monolithic “She gets to be in a very privileged position speaking from a very privileged perspective and that’s dangerous,” Carrasco said and I think that’s the dialogue that you’re seeing (online).” Carrasco and East Side activists said disparaging Chavez’s legacy in San Jose isn’t a knock solely against the city “What they’re doing is they are completely whitewashing and rewriting and just paving over the bodies of my ancestors,” said Paul Soto a longtime community leader and fourth generation San Josean “There’s no way that mindset doesn’t infect the decisions that impact the very people that that man defended because their ancestors are still here.” As the hundreds of reactions poured in about Halberstadt’s remarks about Chavez, local artist Lila Gemellos’ art served as the backdrop to the issue The original comment was made in a story about Gemellos’ art who serves on the commission with Halberstadt agreed that her perspective of Chavez was “inappropriate.” “We are not the most diverse group on the Historical Heritage Commission,” Gemellos said “We need to start engaging some of these groups and finding out more about the heritage than just what is written down This discussion needs first-person accounts We need to have a place where this story is preserved and told.” Gemellos’ first step is recognizing her own shortcomings, which includes featuring former Mayor Thomas Fallon’s statue – installed after a decade of protest from Latinx activists claiming it honored oppression – in one of her recent murals While Gemellos has scheduled meetings to talk with community leaders about his history she said there’s a lack of information about Fallon other than his short tenure in government and bloodless conquer of the city during the Mexican-American War she said other artists could make the same decisions She sees this controversy as a reminder to be more aware of her artistic decisions “I was chosen because I do beautiful architectural drawings in vivid color and that is all this was ever meant to be,” she said noting that it was a design process involving several stakeholder reviews “We felt like the statue was part of the architecture and the character of the street.” Gemellos hopes the attention and passion this conversation has drawn will fill those gaps of knowledge representation and inclusiveness in the history of San Jose “There’s clearly a conversation that needs to be had I’m so glad the community is even interested in doing that with me,” Gemellos said Contact Katie Lauer at [email protected] or follow @_katielauer on Twitter Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from our team Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value" Cesar means more to us then her uneducated,self centered Her statements are exactly what I wrote to the Community this week What does this lady understand about our history She herself would be off of the Commission if those that installed her followed the guidelines that are proposed for future Commissioners Her attitude about getting others angry repersent the Politicians that appointed her She bleeds their attempts to remove our heros – seeking to silently remove our students from their history Making mind slavery much easier to achieve Would she have said that about Norm Mineta A Elected leader followed by the majority of voters that elected him Cesar was followed Nation wide with out asking for anything except Justice for Farmworkers I gladly walked the Picket lines at Safeway That means she was living in her own box where she was unable to become educated about the world around her I am personally in this comment demanding that she remove herself from this very import position We have no time to teach people who are unrepresented and unresponsive to our history had you been aware that Bobby Kennedy met with Cesar who represents US you would have realized what Ceasar had accomplished to that date at least alone There is much more history to follow that was not investigated because Cesar was “Brown” an unimportant in the closed mind You are exactly why “I am not liked” at City Hall I fight for Community Justice againt your kind that push our quality of life standards lower and lower demabding that we accept the conditions or leave you are speaking the [First Language] of Cesar Chavez rather than getting all puffed up and huffy All April was saying is that Cesar didn’t live in SJ long enough to make an impact the irony that Carrasco and others in that community are up in arms because Halberstadt “is attempting to erase history and write a new narrative.” Ever heard of Larry Itliong Be sure to pay special attention to how HIS story was erased and WHO wrote the new narrative Someone who has such a dismissive attitude towards the public should not be in public service This is worse than the typical not-pology because it insults the people it’s directed to Nobody with this attitude should be in a public position if they are going to dismiss the public they claim to represent If it had been a completely false rumor that Cesar Chavez had ever lived here that’s different than him living here before he reached the peak of his achievements It is very typical for cities to honor people who grew up there and went on to fame or who lived there during part of their lives This is an excuse to put down the Mexican-American community of San Jose and tell them they don’t have the right to honor a hero of their people Is she jealous that people aren’t as attached to White historical figures and I’m horrified that a committee for public art in San Jose thought it was appropriate for the Fallon statue to dominate the design that way But it’s dwarfed by the high rise buildings (such as Slavery Towers) surrounding it Anyone working in public art should have been aware of the controversy which was brought up recently with the expense of relocating the statue when the road was realigned (I’ve only lived here since 2016 and I know about this.) The symbolism of having a white supremacist looming over the neighborhood should have been questioned in the context of multicultural San Jose Even if the artist made an unfortunate design choice the reason public art goes through committees is to get other perspectives and stop bad ideas from being painted on public walls a symbol of gentrification and attitudes that some places are only for some kinds of people to play or live The kitchen and hospitality workers there are predominantly Latinx but they can’t afford to dine or stay there so might as well remind them of this on their way to and from work we took your ancestors’ land…” Is this the message San Jose should be sending with public art Is this really the moral equivalent of being proud of a civil rights leader the United States conquered lands in the Western United States from Mexico with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo February 2 Mexico’s claim to those lands result from their independence from Spain So Mexico held the territory for a whopping 26 years and 4 months Spain maintained a number of missions and presidios going back to 1519 with the Spanish Crown formally laying claim to the north coastal provinces of California in 1542 any number of earlier inhabitants of the region likely displaced one another over thousands of years Spain took the land from its earlier inhabitants The United States of America took the land from Mexico the displacement of one people by another is a constantly recurring theme which continues even to this day If anyone wants to complain about the theft of land the ones with the best case are those who were conquered by the Spanish in the first place Native Americans can freely speak to this historical question Where do you get the idea that Fallon was a white supremacist Do you know that he was married to a Californio woman so his six kids were all Mexican-American But I do think his statue is way too prominent in the mural council member pushing an agenda and Carrasco is known for instigating and feeding disputes The historian is DUE respect and I understand her perspective and she is not trying to WIPE OUT the Hispanic generations/culture Maturity should be displayed and less with the whole rivalry This incident indicates the need for a cross section of people representative of the entire population to site on all government commissions and councils Too many people who sit on boards or commissions have been representative of only one segment of our community I am glad that people on the east side or who are Latino are pushing for eyes to be open as to the full heritage of San Jose (and most of California) Too many of us Anglos are ignorant of the people we live amongst I am glad that at last we have 5 Latino City Council members representing ALL of us not just the historical elite living in the Rose Garden or Almaden Valley where City Council Members all once lived take that intersectionality and flush it down the toilet with communism And we’ve got almost no one representing “us.” The “minorities” have most of the power and some of them are racist and push racist agendas Her arguments(April) about Cesar Chavez make no sense George Washington didn’t live in California or even explored California so does this make him irrelevant As for Gemellos comments about “we need to engage these groups” does that include white people’s art Gemellos mural in my opinion looks busy and childish and has no place in downtown What does history have to do with her job and art I am glad Council member Carrasco spoke up and I think these people have to be replaced If the city wants to tie all art in San Jose to history then they need to make that clear going forward isnt this the guy who drove up and down the valleys beating illegal immigrants with chains to scare them back to Mexico Halberstadt claims she’s since penned an apology for upsetting those who took offense Does anyone see a problem with the first paragraph specifically the sentence “while accurately reported the quote was removed in an editorial decision.” This is the hard left (hard right is just as bad) and their giant hypocrisy… they yell about freedom of speech but when someone says something they don’t like or agree with – they yell and scream while being wrong (just because you feel a certain way it does not make you right – but apparently a mob mentality can make you right these days) Giving people what they want simply because they are yelling and stomping their feet is like letting your child get out of control by continuing to constantly give them what they want This is actually a journalistic disaster to have an editorial board remove factual content because people did not want to hear the truth wiping the record for everyone because a few are upset The press should be concerned about guys like Trump Everyone is entitled to there opinions and it unjust to not allow someone regardless of if they hold office or not to them..I’m here reading your comments wondering if the city really needs yet another stupid historical preserved thing What are you going to attend it and go to the museum No it’s gonna be again like every other empty waste of One more museum we have that are for schools what does a house someone lived in teach about that person or what they did nothing it shows where he shit showered and shaved besides he’s already got prime real estate where the original city hall used to be and where Christmas in The park fitting also to be across from the union and the Fairmont and every bank headquarters in the region Love the man remember the legend but really do we honestly need his freaking house he lived in for a brief time at all Are you going to donate money to pay for it’s upkeep Rad Allen you are right about everybody is entitled to their opinion so why are you upset about what other people have written The city council recently approved big bucks for the light tower to be located at the Arena Green and you can say the same about that This is no different than the buildings different groups try and save in our city and the most recent example is the former court house that a developer wants to tear down and others want to save as historical April Halberstadt is a well-respected local historian and she merely spoke the truth about the role of Cesar Chavez in local history Her understanding of history and the fact that she brought this issue up for consideration is an important reason to have her on the commission She said nothing disrespectful of Cesar Chavez and nothing to detract from his important role in history she merely questioned the strength of that connection to San Jose I have read the petition by San Jose United and I find that petition offensive I disagree with the claim by that group that a public outcry to Halberstadt’s comments can be expected–in fact a public outcry is quite surprising and is based on a misunderstanding at best We shouldn’t be bullied by a group of people who are too easily offended and don’t want to hear or consider the truth if it might differ from the myth they want to portray Organized opposition in support of a wrongful action should fail I wonder why April who is a well known local historian singled out Chavez She stated his name is all over town but I disagree I wish April would of given examples of people who she thinks will fit her criteria to have their name all over San Jose by the way of art or statues Moving forward what are the guidelines of the Historical Heritage Commission and purpose Are there projects in the works that involve people who lived in San Jose that they plan to promote Who are the of people she thinks fits her definition of historical people for San Jose I hope these people are not being paid and select themselves to plaster their art all over San Jose Carrasco has a goal and she’s working her agenda She has let her real goal slip a few times during Council meetings “Now we can get a Latino.” The was the goal the whole time Antique dealers and collectors want pieces to be exact and want the exact history that goes with it That’s the difference between a history book and a novel I understood what April Halberstadt was saying Thank you for your dedication to art and our community April provided her expert opinion from a historical perspective on a mural painted on the side of a downtown building which was taken out of context through shaky journalism and then her comments were used against her by a council person with an agenda April has resigned from the commission satisfying the wants of the council person and San Jose has lost a person with valuable insight to the history of our community April received multiple nasty emails for her trouble, as did other members of the Heritage Commission You must be logged in to post a comment San José Spotlight is an award-winning nonprofit newsroom dedicated to fearless journalism that disrupts the status quo holds power to account and paves the way for change We’re changing the face of local journalism by building a community-supported newsroom that ignites civic engagement educates residents and strengthens our democracy 408.206.5327[email protected] Submit a News TipSubscribe to our newsletters San José Spotlight is a project of the San José News Bureau a 501(c)(3) charitable organization | Tax ID: 82-5355128 ' + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.webview_notification_text + ' " + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.redirect_overlay_title + " " + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.redirect_overlay_text + " Richard Nixon became the first American president to resign from office I was playing in the street in San Luis Obispo when I heard I had been raised to dislike Nixon and to consider him a buffoon but I was a child: all I really knew was that the bad guy had lost and we jumped up and down shouting giddily — seven years old and caught up in the zeitgeist On the day Nixon delivered his resignation speech of the fourth part of “Empty Words,” a piece for unaccompanied voice “Empty Words” draws its text from Thoreau’s journals and subjects the source to chance operation: over the course of its four movements comprehensible phrases are reduced first to words The silences between sounds grow longer and longer as the piece progresses; by the fourth movement the audience is watching a person sitting motionless on a stage intoning lone consonants or vowels very slowly and deliberately pausing between utterances for as long as twelve minutes while drawings by Thoreau are projected onto a screen behind him Fifteen hundred people showed up to watch Cage at the Naropa Institute in Boulder A radio interview given just before the performance found the composer in a playful mood he decided to perform with his back to the audience — he’d “recalled that the Bodhidharma sat facing a wall in China for ten years.” The Naropa Institute had been founded by a Tibetan monk in exile; Cage saw a connection to make I had an astonishing experience recently with the “Empty Words”  that the thought entered my mind that the whole activity was not only useless The social situation was really miserable; however and at one point a group of people came to protect me and it was generally an upsetting situation I want to attribute that violent response to the tenor of the times: everything was up in the air But Cage would perform “Empty Words” again to even greater tumult; the audience rioted for the duration of the performance “One person came up and took my glasses off to keep me from reading and also the light that I was reading by was smashed,” Cage said “I didn’t see how it could be termed successful in terms of my work since it was impossible for anyone to hear what I was doing; but it was a kind of social occasion.” I’m walking through Halberstadt; it’s quiet In the mid-Nineties I spent a couple of months in Germany and Halberstadt reminds me of the small towns between the big cities that I saw then Much of its architecture bears the stamp of the postwar German Democratic Republic: plain and functional buildings in muted colors these give way to cobblestones and sterner and it’s home to churches that date back to the eleventh century Burchardi is one of the oldest: it was built around 1050 and deconsecrated in 1810 Since then it has served a number of purposes — barn If it weren’t for the upkeep performed by the John Cage Organ Project On October 5 there’s going to be a note change on the organ that sounds day and night inside the skeletal remains of the church and it will be seven years until there’s another The whole performance — of a piece by Cage called ORGAN²/ASLSP — will last until 2640 Halberstadt is home to the Project because it was the place where the modern twelve-note keyboard was invented and installed on an organ built by the priest Nikolaus Faber; the bellows reportedly took ten men to operate has a short section about the construction of this organ: it’s headlined fatal day in halberstadt The organ’s third manual consisted of nine front keys and five raised rear keys “Here is the proto 7-White — 5-Black!” writes Partch “selected by some inscrutable destiny to send its descendants over the face of the earth and to make them the procreators of virtually all musical thought.” These are the notes that came to define European harmony There might have been a whole bunch more notes in that scale — or fewer Music might have gone any number of places But the equal temperament of the Halberstadt organ — the standardized differences between its tones — fixed the distance between its twelve points In “45′ for a Speaker,” Cage writes: I have noticed something else about Christian Wolff’s music All you can do is suddenly listen in the same way that Cage was dissatisfied with other composers’ reliance on “musical” sounds; he wondered about silence (“45′ for a Speaker” contains numerous stage directions for the reader to undertake: “snore,” “hiss,” “slap table,” “cough.”) Cage composed for standard instruments but he used them in novel ways: he’d insert nuts or bolts between piano strings or give over the composition of his pieces entirely to chance operations “It is thus possible to make a musical composition the continuity of which is free of individual taste and memory (psychology) and also of the literature and ‘traditions’ of the art,” he writes The twelve-note scale is a color palette for self-expression but Cage doesn’t conceive of music along these lines: “I want to free my music from my memory and taste and from my likes and dislikes so that my music instead of saying something that I have to say or expresses me I see a woman painting a portrait of John Cage onto a circuit box She’s seated in the grass with her paints and brushes examining her work attentively; the dates and locales of the composer’s birth (September 5 as it did in life; he gazes into the middle distance though it’s done with cheerful and colorful accents in a simple or a painting of Jim Morrison in rock and roll heaven ORGAN²/ASLSP is John Cage’s arrangement for organ of ASLSP in 1985; the title stands for “as slow as possible,” though that phrase doesn’t appear on The title is also an allusion to the final paragraph of Finnegans Wake (“Soft morning a book that Cage returned to many times throughout his life Its specific connection to ASLSP is unclear though Finnegans Wake is a circular novel that begins midsentence and ends with “the,” leading the reader directly back to the headless neologism at the start The book is longer than as long as possible: it’s endless Offering neither time signature nor any indication of tempo both a piece of music and an invitation to think more broadly about music with the numbers one through eight placed at the head of every other line There’s only one instruction to the prospective player of the piece: “Distinct from ASLSP and as in ASLSP the repetition may be placed anywhere in the series.” After that Spectators interrupting Cage’s performance of “Empty Words,” Milan This is an almost insurmountable degree of freedom and responsibility Let’s say I decide first how long I want the piece to last: maybe I have an hour in the morning between waking up and leaving for work Then I’ll have to do some math to determine how long to play each note This would be an unusual approach to playing music If I’m reluctant to play God and assign a tempo where the composer has declined to do so I might instead think a little about decay Strike a note on a piano and hold down the key; the tone grows softer and softer until it’s gone will decay completely — into silence — after about thirty seconds and then calculate half-notes from there; with practice playing the piece more naturally than I could with my stopwatch This would feel more traditionally musical than watching a clock wanted to shake music free from the default settings of what seems natural or not As long as I’m holding the keys down and there’s air coming through the bellows Maybe I could set a metronome at its slowest setting and play to that I’ve got a digital piano in my office whose built-in metronome goes all the way down to ten: that’s one beat every six seconds I can’t count the rhythm as I normally would namely by getting a feel for the pulse and adhering to it I could even vary the tempo a little from movement to movement But when I punch the organ setting and sound the first chord of ORGAN²/ASLSP and without decay that means not playing at all I become convinced that this moment is the practical end of the proceedings Any remaining notes after the first chord — all of them — are ideas from a mythical future I should let this one chord sound until I am no longer physically capable of holding down the keys and I remain partial to it: in Cage’s writings often in places where others hadn’t — it’s everywhere “The duration of one part of the production is 71 years because ORGAN²/ASLSP consists of 8 parts and one is being repeated (639/9 = 71),” says an appendix supplied by the John Cage Organ Foundation Each determined tone change takes place on the 5th day of the relevant month.” At the premiere of ORGAN²/ASLSP Gerd Zacher played for twenty-nine minutes The performance at Halberstadt began with a rest — “silence,” though Cage had reservations about the word — in the year 2000 639 years after the installation of the original Halberstadt organ 639 years after the sounding of the first note The performance will last 639 years because it began 639 years after the installation of the Halberstadt organ I didn’t inventory my expectations regarding ORGAN²/ASLSP as I boarded the plane from New Jersey to Berlin and as I rode the train toward the Harz Mountains I held them in check: it seemed in keeping with the spirit of Cage’s work to put away old ideas in order to clear a space for new ones “There’s a chord sounding on an organ in an empty church in Germany a discordant chord that has been sounding since 2012,” what do you hear I’d imagined a drone; and when I imagine a drone a sound into which the audience in attendance might collectively sink but volume’s part of what I’m expecting to get So it’s with some surprise that on entering I find I can not only hear myself speak The organ’s there in the middle of the skeletal former church down past the entryway and to the right; it has no visible keys and appears unfinished albeit symmetrical (pipes are added or subtracted as the score requires) but it’s not huge or monolithic; the high ceilings make it seem somewhat modest sounding away — a handful of bright silver pipes housed within an open wooden frame atop a platform pebbled ground beneath it where the floor of the church once was the gigantic bellows some ten paces away on the other side of the room It’s not an organ yet; it’s a work in progress noting that it needs electricity to function; any number of things might interrupt though nobody can walk up and play something new as I’ll learn at the changing of the note; as long as the power stays on and the strings that suspend the sandbags hold I read the plaques on the walls for a while and the display of news articles from around the world at the far end of the room The chord isn’t pretty and it’s not unpretty; it’s just kind of there It’s discordant — I can make out two notes separated by either a half-step or a whole But the context of this chord is no discernible tune at all: it’s cold air and the crunch of the pebbles underneath me and the voices of the people who come and go I set a timer on my phone for ten minutes to see how far my mind wanders while I’m sitting there listening Krishnamurti guided meditations Current 93 anechoic chambers Cage in re: mystified audience reaction to projections of Thoreau’s drawings in interview re: Boulder performance (“they’re beautiful”) endless smoke I have no recollection of what “endless smoke” could refer to is largely focused on the apocalyptic and the arcane Krishnamurti was a philosopher for whom all sensory experiences became their own self-sufficient explanations which were devoid of further external relevance (“I do not think there is any such thing as ‘I,’ or ‘self.’ ”) Guided meditations I thought of because they often have recurring phrases like “returning always to your breath,” which seemed a useful way of thinking about how I was listening unchanging sound while my thoughts strayed far and wide and had to be brought back Anechoic chambers because all other sounds were amplified: the volume of everything seemed to rise in the presence of this small unpretentious chord piping away without any particular feeling or movement it might have sounded like something from a horror soundtrack; a fifth might have sounded churchy I checked the timer after it felt like I’d been listening for some time line the walls of the former church: they bear inscriptions in several languages — obituaries quotations from Lord Byron or Yogi Berra or the Bible Some show the names of whole families spanning several generations A few direct the viewer to websites; I typed in the address of one of them It was a project consisting of video footage from the cockpit of a plane traveling from Frankfurt to Chennai The John Cage Organ Project receives no public funding so the plaques represent a major source of support A single plaque indicates sponsorship of any one year While the organ apparatus remains the most arresting visual feature of the church the plaques offer a chance to reflect on the project’s scope in real terms 2484 “all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us there are other forces at work in this world from the fellowship of the ring eric and jane schulenburg (and others to follow) madison — wisconsin usa geburtstag von richard wagner johannes baillou 1965 wien that glorious paradox who sent me to the stars keep his neighbor’s children starving?” planet of the apes (movie 1968) klaus schneyder 21 2131 in dankbarer erinnerung an meine schwester ruth (1931–2008) die in meiner kinder- und jugendzeit für mich der wichtigste mensch war [in thanksgiving for the life of my sister who was the most important person for me in my childhood and adolescence!] it doesn’t seem like there are many people at the church They walk up to the organ and look; they take pictures But the performance taking place inside goes on day and night the church is open only from noon till four That’s twenty hours each day of a performance with no audience Not only will nobody ever see the entire performance of ORGAN²/ASLSP or even a notable fraction of it — most of the people who hear it at all will hear the parts that are least typical The actual performance can only be guessed at I logged at least five hours in the church over the course of a week In those hours I felt like I was getting a sense of it and I saw one millionth of a performance of a piece of music Burchardi the plaques on the walls say: we were here; we heard it Our numbers stretched across the centuries this is the biographical section of this article I’m told that as I age I’ll become more interested in reading history and biographies hold on I’ll go get my books and confirm what sort of engineer you feel an obligation to round up all the books when you’re researching an article about a person’s work one could as well spend a few days wandering corners of the Internet and gather all the same information and I wonder whether that wouldn’t honestly be the method more in keeping with Cage’s philosophy let me say in passing that I have a mistrust of the word “philosophy” but the alternatives were worse my mother was not just a librarian but a reference librarian I imagine John Cage being told that old habits die hard and thinking yes and yet this was one of the things at Halberstadt that troubled and provoked me this is an old story and not any special insight of mine but the avant-garde when it’s successful loses most of its power to shock the observer to jar the listener from complacency and awaken him into a new world of possibilities where an organ is no longer an organ but a thing being assembled over hundreds of years and yet this is perhaps Halberstadt’s truest moment with reference to Cage because otherwise as we either have seen or will see or will not see but have to infer depending on where this bit lands in the sequencing of the article you’re now reading there’s a deeply hagiographic element to the proceedings for example this attraction in the project’s press materials to the phrase “Dear John,” its lovelorn context gone missing its sense of goodbye annihilated by sentiment the woman painting his face on the circuit box the actual relics from Cage’s apartment now arranged on display in the exhibit hall on the day when all the onlookers come to see the Changing of the Note all this lends rather a lot of the Great Man theory to the proceedings though I’m not entirely persuaded Cage would have disapproved he wasn’t immodest but one gets the sense he knew his name would endure the ideas Cage presents in his writing seem inimical to romantic ideas about composers the composer’s imprint is something he seeks to shed what could be more hostile to romantic tendencies than to shun self-expression the “Empty Words,” the performances of which in their duration and iconoclasm seem utterly fated to bring the focus wholly not onto Thoreau’s drawings or onto his words onto the man who has turned his face away from the audience at Boulder the audience that feels driven in the presence of the composer to make its response known “it was a kind of social occasion,” but the work itself liberated from the twin tyrannies of compositional thrust and interpretive bent the plaques with their mesostics spelling out j-o-h-n c-a-g-e as meaningless as alien alphabets the wait for the next note change imperceptible for months a quiet chord in a town known mainly to historians of music but also to those who live there most of whom are just going about their business most of the time edward donnachie 2 months ago That guy John Cage was taking the piss 1990osu 1 week ago Look up “The Emperor’s New Clothes” by Hans Christian Anderson Joo Yong-sung 2 weeks ago Freakin i can compose better than him borobadger 2 weeks ago what a real fucking disgraceful piece of shit this is silence from some kook in front of a stage of people People get suckered into all sorts of crap like this and abstract art Compose a good piece of music and paint me a picture you avant-garde con men The more people accept things like this as artistic vacant ldn 4 months ago whats the point having the musicians there There are more than 1,426 comments beneath a video of an arrangement for orchestra of John Cage’s 4’33” (“my silent piece”) that was broadcast over BBC Four and conducted by Lawrence Foster; it was uploaded to YouTube on October 1 It’s been viewed 510,888 times as of this writing Most seem to come from the thumbs-down crowd but Cage finds his defenders; they patiently and often condescendingly explain that “anybody could do this” doesn’t really amount to a critique or that listening is as important as playing weigh in with heartfelt and often moving expressions of what silence might mean in our daily lives: how an opportunity to hear it is rare and perhaps precious Over the course of the thread the word “hipster” gets used more than once What strikes me as remarkable about this thread is how successful Cage has been at challenging the listener to think about music — about what it is or isn’t about what constitutes music and what doesn’t The twentieth century didn’t lack for challenging music: Stravinsky The list of names whose music inspired the drawing of new battle lines is long but 4’33” provokes in a way that The Rite of Spring no longer can It succeeds in presenting its theoretical concerns so succinctly that people respond instantly This sets Cage rather apart from other composers Xenakis compositions uploaded to YouTube attract mainly the converted Joan La Barbara manages to pull a little heat If you subjected passersby to some of Stockhausen’s shortwave compositions you might be able to get a rise out of them 4’33” has been successfully provoking people since 1952 the day of the note change; John Cage was born on September 5 which explains why all changes occur on the fifth of the month (I’ve spent much of this week quietly gnashing my teeth about how this isn’t chance; it’s arbitrary.) Last night I watched a performance of ORGAN²/ASLSP; it lasted about twenty minutes it left me feeling not unpleasantly unsatisfied Music is commonly approached with ideas about tension and release about making expectations explicit by either meeting or defying them Making his way around the grounds with the air of an on-deck batter is Rainer Neugebauer chairman of the board of trustees of the John Cage Organ Foundation gaunt man with a magnificent graying beard and a pair of glasses whose tiny rectangular lenses would look pretentious on anybody else because his presentation as an intellectual is so total and so ideal that to shortchange the picture with lesser glasses would be uncouth but big questions about big things are never more than a few conversational turns away daydreaming of some distant future in which I free of the hardships and strictures of adolescence I thought I might grow up to be somebody like Rainer Neugebauer He saw Cage do “Empty Words” at the John Cage festival in Bonn in 1979; before Halberstadt he had mainly been interested in Cage as an artist “in the footsteps of Marcel Duchamp and dada,” as he said to me in an email I have discovered for me during the last 15 years.” Earlier this morning the church was open and people came and went but the doors were locked at noon to make preparations for the big event I walk over to the art exhibit that’s been installed in the postwar building that stands adjacent to the church offering details of the pieces inside: manuscript pages; a cactus connected to a Marshall mini-amplifier via contact microphones (this is a performance of to the Cage pieces “Child of Tree” and “Branches,” which consist of instructions for playing chance pieces on plants); a goldfish tank that’s somehow wired for sound and they say a little about themselves and their relationship to Cage’s music or thought founder of the Mountain Lake Workshop and the author of The Sight of Silence: John Cage’s Complete Watercolors whose decade-in-the-making film about the Halberstadt project will premiere at the exhibition today and warmly about the project and about the piece We all go outside into the rain to wait around near the church — why Every seat’s a good one inside; it’d be smarter to stay where it’s warm until the doors have been opened I find some guys who’ve come over from England I manage to lose not just one shoe but both of them in a calf-deep sinkhole (Ray Kass later writes me to say that he and Kuhn read the loss of my shoes as “a spontaneous and un-planned performance of John Cage’s ‘STEPS: A Composition for a Painting to Be Performed by Individuals and Groups.’ ”) Most people here haven’t been inside before trying to get a sense of what they’re seeing I never saw the place with more than a half-dozen people in it and it’s jarring to see it filled by the crowd who crane over one another to get a look at the organ apparatus or stroll curiously past the plaques four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence so our 4’33” seems more tribute than performance But maybe it’s a new arrangement of the original Or a performance of an entirely separate piece that is inspired by Cage and taking place concurrently with the performance of ORGAN²/ASLSP and then he introduces the people who’ll be attaching and releasing the small sandbags that will open up the stops and let the new chord in It’s a pretty officious bit of ceremony for a Cage piece but why not — it only happens every so often Everybody listens together for just a second or two making sure they hear how it’s different now communal relaxation — there’s laughter and applause most unusual musical experiences I’ve ever had: sharing music with strangers is something we often take for granted there’s a real feeling that we’ve all just heard something big happen because the chord was sounded one note at a time all three of these notes are on the same beat; they ought to be played simultaneously I’ve been spending so much time all week thinking about Cage and his music that I wake up in the middle of the night back home thinking about the staggered chord Three notes have been added; there’s a melody where none was But then I imagine the unattainable scenario of listening to all 639 years at one sitting: our tiny stagger would occur within such a short space of time that it would sound more like a flourish than a flub It would be like a guitarist articulating the notes of a chord instead of striking the strings all at once A rock musician might make a choice like this with his own composition on any given night Spacing the notes of a chord into separate articulations: this is taking liberties I think about the communal feeling of expectation inside the church: how good it felt when everybody heard the new chord after those four minutes and thirty-three seconds of non-silence Cage writes about his relationship to classical music in his “Lecture on Nothing.” “I remember as a child loving all the sounds,” he says From a video of the eleventh note change at Halberstadt danilo alves 7 months ago I’ve now found the droniest drone I was looking for ireallyamironman 1 year ago SHIT I HIT THE WRONG NOTE theuniversalwoman 1 year ago Is this some sort of punishment jerryjeffelvis 1 year ago this music will take 630 years to finish playing richard clifford 1 year ago I’ll bet you the world will end before the performance ends Timeless stories from our 175-year archive handpicked to speak to the news of the day “An unexpectedly excellent magazine that stands out amid a homogenized media landscape.” —the New York Times By 2023-01-30T14:10:00 Mercedes-Benz Trucks is working on a Global Parts Center in Germany that will supply global dealers with service parts from 2026 The facility will manage 300,000 different line items for almost 3,000 dealers across the world The truckmaker said the latest storage and conveyor technology will facilitate the timely retrieval of parts Those parts will be supplied from around 2,600 suppliers and will be distributed to 20 regional logistics centres around the world To continue reading this article and others like it, please SIGN-IN or REGISTER FREE today By creating your account you will be able to stay up-to-date with the latest industry developments, trends and analysis, read in-depth reports and intelligence Gain access to our exclusive content and features register free today Non-registered users are able to access one AL exclusive articles per week. 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