Celebrated Jackson textile artist Gwendolyn Magee, who turned a traditional art form into profound contemporary art, died Wednesday night following an illness.

Magee, 67, who was honored for artistic achievement with a 2011 Governor?s Award for Excellence in the Arts this past February, was renowned for her works centered around African American life and history.

The Smithsonian Institution, the Mississippi Museum of Art and the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African-American History are among the institutions that have collected and/or exhibited her works.

Magee?s death sent shock waves and grief through an artistic community that warmed to her radiant spirit as well as her fabric creations.

?It?s just a tremendous loss for the artistic community and our country, really,? Mississippi Museum of Art director Betsy Bradley said. ?She created profound statements in a very traditional medium, but in an innovative and tremendously beautiful manner.?

Mississippi Arts Commission executive director Malcolm White said Magee ?artistically came alive at a mature age and really achieved amazing things,? telling powerful historical stories through an old art form that she took to a contemporary level.

Magee joined the Craftsmen?s Guild of Mississippi in 1998, became a fellow in 2007 and was a committed board member for the guild. She was ?Miss November? in the guild?s inaugural Expose Yourself to Crafts calendar, posing in a full body wrap of her sunburst quilt. She was ?tickled? about the project, Craftsmens Guild of Mississippi executive director Julia Daily recalled, keeping it a secret even from her husband until the unveiling, when she sashayed down the Mississippi Craft Center stairs in a trenchcoat to theme music.

Magee was working on a quilt about the Freedom Riders for a Montgomery museum at the time of her death ? a selected work that she was feverishly working on but didn?t finish, Daily and longtime friend Geraldine Brookins said.

A memorial service for Magee is set for 5 pm May 6 at the Mississippi Museum of Art.

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PETALING JAYA: Malaysians spent RM1.8bil shopping on the Internet last year, and this figure is expected to almost triple in three years, according to a Nielsen Company study.

The study, commissioned by PayPal, also found that Malaysians were spending more on local websites with transactions worth RM825mil, compared with foreign websites which only recorded RM627mil in receipts.

The study polled 400 Malaysian online shoppers aged 18 and above in January and February this year for their online and mobile shopping transactions in the past 12 months.

A PayPal statement Thursday said online shoppers mostly bought airline tickets, financial services, fashion and cosmetics from local websites while more book purchases and music and movie downloads were made on foreign websites.

When Malaysian shoppers buy from overseas websites, they cite unavailability of items as the main reasons for shopping there. Cost was the least of their concerns.

The study also found that shopping on mobile devices registering strong growth potential.

Last year, more than 254,000 online shoppers spent RM100mil paying bills and buying movie tickets, books and movie/music/game downloads on their mobile devices.

However, online security was among the top concerns for online shoppers with seven out of 10 shoppers willing to spend more online if safety measures were increased.

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Editors note: This is an expanded version of Andrew OHehirs original review of Cave of Forgotten Dreams, published last fall from the Toronto International Film Festival.

Something like 20,000 years ago, a rock slide sealed up the entrance to a large cave set into a limestone cliff above the Ardche River in southern France. As far as scientists can tell, no human being entered it again until 1994, when a trio of explorers wedged themselves through a tiny aperture and made one of the most extraordinary discoveries of cultural history: Chambers upon chambers of spectacular prehistoric art, both figurative and abstract, including images of many extinct species of Ice Age animals. You and I will never see any of this, except with the help of Werner Herzogs strange, flawed and mesmerizing 3-D film Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which premiered last fall at the Toronto film festival and is now reaching North American theaters. (It will be screened in both 3-D and 2-D versions, and while the augmented experience is certainly remarkable, the film is worth seeing in either format.)

Lets go over that again briefly: Werner Herzog has made a 3-D movie thats almost entirely set inside a cave full of Stone Age art. His producer, Erik Nelson — a professional friend and an occasional Salon contributor — jokes that Herzog is the first director of the recent 3-D renaissance to use the technology for good, not for evil. Thats not entirely fair, but its close. Certainly Herzog has opened up new aesthetic and journalistic possibilities for 3-D, and almost new spiritual possibilities as well, in terms of evoking unusual and specific experiences and environments in ways conventional cinema cant. Secondly, yes, the art is beautiful, even stunningly accomplished, and these images are breathtaking — unlike anything youve seen before or will see again. And thirdly, just to bring this down to the level of user experience, yes, Cave of Forgotten Dreams will become a classic drug movie almost immediately, although the experience is mind-altering enough without any augmentation.

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We must start with the belief that change is possible, said Howard.

The case for a new kind of workplace is compelling. The improved human relationships, trust and increased business performance that can result, should not be ignored.

Time to Transform Workplaces by Howard Marshall is available to download free via the website: www.bevanfoundation.org.

For further details, call Victoria Winckler on 01495 356702.

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WASHINGTON – BUSINESSES owned by Asian Americans have grown at more than twice the national average, offering a boost to the United States economy, official figures said on Thursday.

Releasing a survey taken twice each decade, the Census Bureau said that Asian Americans owned 1.5 million businesses in 2007, a rise of 40 per cent from five years earlier. The national growth rate was 18 per cent.

Asian-owned businesses continued to be one of the strongest segments of our nations economy, Mr Thomas Mesenbourg, the deputy director of the Census Bureau, said in a statement. The businesses generated more than US$500 billion (S$613 billion) in sales in 2007 and employed some 2.8 million people, the Census Bureau said.

Of Asian-owned businesses, more than one-quarter were run by Chinese Americans. Businesses owned by Vietnamese Americans were among the fastest growing, increasing nearly 56 per cent over the five-year period.

Businesses by most US minority groups have been growing strongly, with African American-owned firms soaring more than 60 per cent between 2002 and 2007.

The United States is becoming increasingly diverse. The latest census found nearly 14.7 million Asian Americans, a rise of nearly half from a decade earlier. Only the US Hispanic population grew more quickly. — AFP

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MONTPELIER — Gov. Peter Shumlin invited the Senate Institutions Committee to his office Tuesday morning to make the case for more money for telecommunications.

He was looking for a last-minute change of heart from the committee — and he succeeded.

The committee had been poised to vote on its $153.7 million, two-year capital construction budget when the governors invitation arrived. The panels bill proposed allocating $8 million for projects to connect more Vermonters to the Internet and to enhance cellphone coverage.

Shumlin had asked lawmakers for $13 million, and the House voted to recommend $10 million.

The governor made an increasingly good case in the end that there wasnt enough money to do both broadband and telecommunications if the Senate stuck with $8 million, said Institutions Chairman Bob Hartwell, D-Bennington.

The committee returned to its meeting room, and Hartwell huddled with staff to pare funding from other items such as school construction and planning for a new state psychiatric hospital in order to shift $3.8 million more to telecommunications. The new two-year total became $11.8 million.

Karen Marshall, Shumlins special assistant in charge of carrying out his ConnectVT initiative to deliver Internet and cellphone service to every corner of the state, watched as the committee worked out final details of the capital project bill.

We can make it work, Marshall said of the $11.8 million, which she said gives us the capacity that we need to get the universal broadband mission absolutely done. She estimated the funding also would allow for installation of about 25 more cellphone towers along 55 targeted corridors where cell service is poor or nonexistent.

With the capital bill, lawmakers also have embraced Shumlins proposal to move to a two-year budget, from a one-year budget. The governor argued that authorizing two years worth of borrowing would allow the state to accelerate projects, take advantage of low interest rates and put Vermonters to work.

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NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH) – The latest studies from Yale shed new light on how familiarity could play a role in human relationships, and that roots of human prejudice could date back to 25 millions years ago.

Laurie Santos, the so called monkey whisperer says a great deal of information can come from monkeys. She has been studying monkeys for nearly 20 years.

They really tell us what are the roots of some of the ways we think of the world, some of the ways we make sense of the world, and they can provide us with hints in certain aspects of our psychology of what we want to change, says Santos.

Santos who is the Associate Professor of Psychology at Yale is also the co-author of two studies recently published. The latest reveals insight on human relationships.

She and her colleagues discovered male monkeys were able to read certain cues.

by hanging out with the particular female, getting to know how she looks day after day, they seem to be better able to read the cues of when she is fertile and when shes not, says Santos.If you think of the people you know really well, you can read their other communicative cues really well, you can tell when their smile isnt really a smile or when they are kind of frowning, but their kind of laughing it off inside, so getting to know somebody means you can read their signals in lots of domains, what were finding is that its true not only for normal communication and emotion, but also for sexual signals.

Santos also studied how human prejudice came about in the first place. The monkeys they observed, showed fear of outsiders.

This shows that even 25 million years back we might have shared at least some of these same mechanisms to detect whos a member of my group, whos an insider whos an outsider and also had some mechanisms.. mmm outsiders Im a little bit uncomfortable with them, or be afraid of them, says Santos.

The good news is the monkeys also showed flexibility in welcoming a new member to the group. Something humans can understand.

Who counts as us versus them is really flexible, it doesnt have to be white and black, it doesnt have to be red sox fans, yankee fans, we can really get creative on who counts. We really have the creative power to do things like that, says Santos.

Santos says its interesting that we have our own mating system, but still know very little about it, so expect followup studies to be done.

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(2011-04-23) Save You Marriage With Licensed Professional Counselor In La

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The Easter holiday weekend is always a busy one on the Limestone Coast, but with five days off work and the school holidays it becomes even bigger.

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Thousands of people have attended the Australian War Memorial dawn service in Canberra to mark 96 years since the ill-fated landing of Australian and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli.

About 28,000 people, including veterans, serving members of the Australian Defence Force and families with young children, turned out to honour the 8,000 Australians who died during the Gallipoli campaign in 1915.

Two wreaths were laid at the Stone of Remembrance as a symbol of Anzac unity by David Knight from the ACT RSL and Commander David Hedgley from the New Zealand High Commission.

ACT RSL president John King addressed the crowd, saying the Anzacs have established an imperishable tradition of selfless service, devotion to duty and fighting for all that is best in human relationships.

Let us therefore dedicate ourselves to taking up the burdens of the fallen and, with the same high courage and steadfastness with which they went into battle, set our hands to the tasks they left unfinished, he said.

Let us dedicate ourselves to the service of the ideals for which they died.

A lone bugler played the Last Post as the first glow of dawn appeared behind the War Memorial, with the crowd observing a minutes silence against a backdrop of singing kookaburras and cockatoos.

Junior Legatee Mark MacInnees broke the sombre silence, reciting in Flanders Field.

Short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved and now we lie in Flanders Fields, he said.

Chaplain Mark Willis gave the commemorative address, saying Anzac Day is not about glorifying war or gloating in victory, but rather remembering the men and women who have given their lives for their country.

Ordinary men and women who are prepared to make personal sacrifices for the freedom and quality of life that we enjoy today, he said.

They believed strongly in a cause – freedom. And so they gave up their ordinary lives in the peace and quiet of the bush and cities of pre-war Australia because they felt it was their duty.

The trouble though with ordinariness is that it can be easily forgotten.

Later this morning the National Service will be held at the War Memorial with a veterans march and wreath laying ceremony.

The memorial will then open its doors allowing visitors to lay poppies on the Roll of Honour and at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Tags:
world-war-1, anzac-day, act, canberra-2600

First posted April 25, 2011 08:25:00

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