Bank of America Merrill Lynch traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2011, in New York. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 322.11 points, its biggest gain in almost two weeks.
Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126768470&ft=1&f=
Katie Eastman's first appearance on the Colbert Report wasn't her last.
Katie Eastman's first appearance on the Colbert Report wasn't her last.
A couple weeks ago, Katie Eastman was asleep at her boyfriend's place in Chicago. She had the night off from her job as a reporter at WOI-ABC 5 in Des Moines, Iowa. She'd been on the job about two months, after graduating from college in the spring.
"I woke up to a barrage of voicemails, text messages, tweets" she says. One message, from a friend across the country, said only, "Katie. I just saw everything. I hope you're all right. Call me."
As she was sleeping, Eastman had just broken into the national spotlight.
Her station had recently refused to air an ad from the Colbert SuperPAC, a super political action committee created by comedian Stephen Colbert. The ad encouraged Iowans to vote for "Rick Parry" in the straw poll ? a misspelling of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's name.
When WOI refused to air the ad, Colbert struck back on his satirical news show, The Colbert Report. Eastman and her boyfriend pulled it up online to watch.
"Clearly someone needs to get to the bottom of this corruption!" Colbert railed. "Someone on the inside, like intrepid WOI reporter Katie Eastman."
At that point, Eastman says, "I just died."
Colbert flashed Eastman's headshot and cut to a clip of her reporting on "the longest annual garage sale in Iowa."
"Katie blew the lid off of Garage-Sale-Gate!" Colbert said. "Clearly, Katie, you're the only one I can trust. Call me."
"I started screaming, and just like pacing the kitchen floor," Eastman says. "Like, 'That just did not just happen! No! That was my face! Oh, my gosh!'"
For most local news reporters who've been mocked on late-night television, that would have been it. Just the one-night punchline and everyone moves on. Not so for Katie.
The next week, Colbert circled back, picking out her coverage of a new city dog park.
"I smell a poo-litzer!" Colbert said.
Eastman's pretty excited about her sudden celebrity. "It's national television. The Colbert Report!" she says ? though not without some trepidation for her career.
"I just ? I really hope people don't think I only cover puppies."
I really hope people don't think I only cover puppies.
Whatever they might think of her, there are definitely more people out there doing it. Someone set up a Facebook fan page for her. The local Fuddrucker's named a burger after her.
"Someone from California tweeted at me and said they had a dream about me," she says. "Isn't that weird?"
And it looks as though Eastman's "Colbert Bump" isn't over yet. Her name was back just last Thursday, when Colbert brought the WOI news team onto the show.
"Where's intrepid cub reporter Katie Eastman?" he demanded. "She's off today," they told him.
Which she was, she says. She probably needed the break.
"You can laugh at yourself," she says. "That's what I've been doing."
Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/20/139815973/intrepid-cub-reporter-living-with-a-colbert-bump?ft=1&f=
Katie Eastman's first appearance on the Colbert Report wasn't her last.
Katie Eastman's first appearance on the Colbert Report wasn't her last.
A couple weeks ago, Katie Eastman was asleep at her boyfriend's place in Chicago. She had the night off from her job as a reporter at WOI-ABC 5 in Des Moines, Iowa. She'd been on the job about two months, after graduating from college in the spring.
"I woke up to a barrage of voicemails, text messages, tweets" she says. One message, from a friend across the country, said only, "Katie. I just saw everything. I hope you're all right. Call me."
As she was sleeping, Eastman had just broken into the national spotlight.
Her station had recently refused to air an ad from the Colbert SuperPAC, a super political action committee created by comedian Stephen Colbert. The ad encouraged Iowans to vote for "Rick Parry" in the straw poll ? a misspelling of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's name.
When WOI refused to air the ad, Colbert struck back on his satirical news show, The Colbert Report. Eastman and her boyfriend pulled it up online to watch.
"Clearly someone needs to get to the bottom of this corruption!" Colbert railed. "Someone on the inside, like intrepid WOI reporter Katie Eastman."
At that point, Eastman says, "I just died."
Colbert flashed Eastman's headshot and cut to a clip of her reporting on "the longest annual garage sale in Iowa."
"Katie blew the lid off of Garage-Sale-Gate!" Colbert said. "Clearly, Katie, you're the only one I can trust. Call me."
"I started screaming, and just like pacing the kitchen floor," Eastman says. "Like, 'That just did not just happen! No! That was my face! Oh, my gosh!'"
For most local news reporters who've been mocked on late-night television, that would have been it. Just the one-night punchline and everyone moves on. Not so for Katie.
The next week, Colbert circled back, picking out her coverage of a new city dog park.
"I smell a poo-litzer!" Colbert said.
Eastman's pretty excited about her sudden celebrity. "It's national television. The Colbert Report!" she says ? though not without some trepidation for her career.
"I just ? I really hope people don't think I only cover puppies."
I really hope people don't think I only cover puppies.
Whatever they might think of her, there are definitely more people out there doing it. Someone set up a Facebook fan page for her. The local Fuddrucker's named a burger after her.
"Someone from California tweeted at me and said they had a dream about me," she says. "Isn't that weird?"
And it looks as though Eastman's "Colbert Bump" isn't over yet. Her name was back just last Thursday, when Colbert brought the WOI news team onto the show.
"Where's intrepid cub reporter Katie Eastman?" he demanded. "She's off today," they told him.
Which she was, she says. She probably needed the break.
"You can laugh at yourself," she says. "That's what I've been doing."
Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/20/139815973/intrepid-cub-reporter-living-with-a-colbert-bump?ft=1&f=
Amy LaVere's new album is called Stranger Me.
In 2009, it was a difficult year for singer-songwriter Amy LaVere: Her producer died, her guitarist quit, and she split up with longtime boyfriend Paul Tyler, who had also been her drummer. LaVere poured her emotion into her writing, and the album that resulted was this year's Stranger Me.
"I went into this [album] probably with more insecurity than I have ever had," LaVere tells NPR's Laura Sullivan. "Just even the title of the record, Stranger Me, is me saying I don't really know who I am in this."
LaVere and Tyler mended their working relationship during the making of Stranger Me, and he returned to the studio to perform on the album. But LaVere says she still gets emotional when singing "Tricky Heart," which is about the two years leading up to their separation.
"I don't have stage fright, necessarily, but I think a lot of the way I cope with what might resemble stage fright is that I definitely lose myself in the stories," LaVere says. "I think about where I was when I wrote it just about every time I perform."
There's at least one silver lining: Stranger Me has been critically praised, earning a nod from Spin magazine as "the breakup album of the year."
"It's been embarrassing how well the record has been received," LaVere says. "It's wildly exceeded my expectations, and I'm grateful for it."
Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/20/139787961/nobody-knows-the-trouble-amy-lavere-s-seen?ft=1&f=
A couple dances at the Polish Club in San Francisco, which hosts a night of blues dancing every Monday.
A couple dances at the Polish Club in San Francisco, which hosts a night of blues dancing every Monday.
Blues was once called the devil's music, but for many, it has transformative, healing power. Every Monday night in San Francisco's Mission District, devout blues followers descend upon the Polish Club for a night of dancing in an unconventional style.
Blues dancing, which requires participants to appear to be in love with their dancing partners ? including strangers ? has helped some at the Polish Club to turn their lives around. Click the link at the top of the page to hear the story of three dancers who say they've felt changed by power of the blues.
Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/19/139790041/the-healing-power-of-blues-dancing?ft=1&f=
Three people died in a flash flood on Friday after heavy rains submerged cars in Pittsburgh and authorities said they were searching for other possible victims.
Numerous vehicles were submerged in the area around Washington Boulevard, which runs parallel to the Allegheny River in the city's Highland Park neighborhood, after thunderstorms dropped up to 3 inches of rain in an hour, the National Weather Service reported.
Rescue crews used inflatable boats to reach other stranded drivers, some of whom say that the waters near the city zoo were 6 feet deep.
KDKA-TV reported that the three victims were found in the same minivan. Emergency officials said a fourth person was missing, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Some drivers had to swim to safety from their cars. Rhodearland "Bob" Bailey, 79, of Penn Hills, was rescued from the roof of his car.
"I can swim a little bit and was looking at a tree branch," Bailey told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "I heard one woman yelling for help, but the water was coming down so fast, I couldn't see. ... I've never seen nothing like this in my life. Lord have mercy."
Tara Howes, 34, of Gibsonia, told the newspaper that "manhole covers started popping up and it looked like the road exploded and the waters came up really fast. I saw people swimming on the sides of the road. It was pretty scary."
The flash floods hit an area that experienced serious flooding last month. Claudia Gallagher, 55, of West Mifflin, was driving north on Washington Boulevard at the height of rainfall and tried to get off the road as the water rose.
"We tried to drive up onto the curb, but the water had other ideas," she told the Post-Gazette.
Her car began to float, and she opened her window and climbed onto the roof, getting her foot caught in the process. Many other drivers nearby were sitting atop their cars, too, she said.
The floodwaters had receded by early evening, leaving behind stranded cars and roads caked in mud.
Earlier Friday, another storm caused power outages that left most of the University of Pittsburgh without electricity.
Flights at Pittsburgh International Airport were grounded because of lightning just after 3 p.m., said spokeswoman JoAnn Jenny.
Two hospitals operated on emergency power after rains flooded a substation in the city's Oakland neighborhood.
Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=139807491&ft=1&f=
As vivid as the confusion and fear of Sept. 11 remain for Karen Cooney, she knows it would be worse if she still lived in New York City.
The only way to move forward, she continues to believe, was to move away.
"Every time you would leave the house, there were reminders," said Cooney, who relocated in 2004 to Upper Southampton, Pa., with her husband. "You'd relive that whole day."
While New York has bounced back from Sept. 11 in many ways, with the population growing in the past 10 years even in the area where the World Trade Center collapsed, living there became impossible for some people traumatized by the attack.
There are no good numbers on how many people left the city because of the attacks, but an analysis of census data by the Empire Center for New York State Policy found that 1.6 million New York state residents moved to other states between 2000 and 2010.
Among them were residents who absorbed a huge emotional toll or the resulting economic hit that cost them their jobs.
Cooney lived on Staten Island, home to many firefighters, police officers and others who died that day. Her husband lost a cousin who was in the fire department. Cooney and her daughter even attended funerals for people they didn't know so that the families would see people coming out to support them.
But over time, it just became too much.
"I think if I had not left, I'm not sure I would have handled it as well," she said.
LaShawn Clark vividly remembers the days after attacks: Heightened security in her neighborhood in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Living amid so much tension that the sound of a car backfiring would make people run.
And, worst of all, the constant grief over the loss of Benjamin Clark, her husband and father of her five children, who died in the collapse of the World Trade Center's south tower.
In early 2003, Clark packed up her children and left for Allentown, Pa. She has never regretted it, or the new life she has built, which included getting remarried and giving birth to a sixth child. It's been better for her children, too.
"I've seen them grow and I've seen them heal," she said. "And I've seen them heal much quicker than they would have in New York."
Making such a change gives people who've lived through traumatic events a modicum of control, and that can be positive, said J. William Worden, a clinical psychologist who has written books on grief and grief counseling.
"Anytime you can assert your sense of agency, that's a good thing," he said. "One of the ways you can make meaning is find something positive or redemptive in a situation."
Charles Petersheim did just that. A construction manager, he saw his job disappear when commercial construction dried up after the attack. With his lease expiring, the Lancaster, Pa., native decided it was time to say goodbye to New York.
"Post-9/11, New York was not the most fabulous place to be," he said. "It was very easy to get out of the city and forget about it for a little bit."
He did that by going north to Eldred, N.Y., in Sullivan County, where he had bought a ramshackle property originally intended as a getaway house. He soon saw an opportunity and started a company fixing up homes, then started building old-fashioned houses with modern conveniences.
In the past 10 years, he estimates, he has built 100 homes, selling many to families leaving New York City for a quieter life. He has built his own life in Sullivan County, as well, and now has a wife and small child.
"For me, it was totally the right choice to make," said Petersheim, 41.
Also relocating to Sullivan County was yoga instructor Cheri Brasseale, who lived near lower Manhattan. As a pregnant Brasseale watched the towers burn, she felt her water break ? right on time.
Sept. 11 was her due date.
She made it to her birthing center, where she watching the news on and off as she waited for her child. She gained perspective on the pain of childbirth.
"If people are dying and grieving, then I can birth a child," she said.
Her son Kai was born at 1 a.m. Sept. 12. She left the city for a time a couple of days afterward, heading up to her and her husband's weekend home in Cochecton Center. It's now their permanent home.
Part of the draw of their current home is that it gives her a sense of community, something she said was lost in New York in the years after Sept. 11 because of the country's polarized political climate.
Now, instead of the urban jungle, she spends her days on a 10-acre spread with chickens, sheep and goats, in a place where she knows the people who own the theater and the bakery.
"I'm happy with my choice," she said.
For Clark, the mother of six, part of the tension stemmed from the constant presence of Sept. 11 even afterward ? the news accounts, the day-to-day living in a place where everybody had been affected in ways large and small.
"You've made history and you've haven't even tried to make history," said the 45-year-old chef, who this month moved to Charlotte, N.C. "You never expect death will come in a way that it's continuously repeated."
Some of the effect of the attacks followed Cooney and her family after they left Staten Island. She made sure she familiarized herself with her new home by figuring out ways to get back in case of an emergency, something she wasn't able to do in the panic of Sept. 11, when she couldn't contact her family.
But the years since they moved have been good for them.
"It was a good decision," she said. "It was the healing process, and that's how we coped."
Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=139786319&ft=1&f=
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You just have to read a story with a headline like this:
"Parking 'squat' Bookseller stakes out same spot for 11 years."
It's from today's New York Post and it's the story of how, "eleven years ago, Charles Mysak snagged a primo parking spot on the corner of Columbus Avenue and 68th Street ? and he hasn't budged since. The sidewalk bookseller keeps his inventory piled up in the beat up green '94 Civic, held partially together with duct tape, and feeds the meter $36 a day ? in quarters ? to hold on to the spot."
Yes, he gets parking tickets. The Post says he has about $470 worth outstanding. And he has to move the car once in the morning so that a street sweeper can come through.
But he holds on to the spot.
"In the old days, you could tie your horse to this, and no one would get a ticket," he told The Post. "It's an outrage so much time is being dedicated to taking money from taxpayers ? they're acting as predators. We are taxed, bullied and harassed."
A little further surfing shows that Mysak is something of a media star.
There's Jalopnik.com's report about "Manhattan's mysterious book-filled car," which includes a video of the morning ballet as the car gets moved to let the street sweeper pass by.
The New York Times has stopped by to see and profile Mysak twice. In 2005 ("A Sidewalk Bookseller With A Keen Ear For Outrage") and again in 2010 ("In Bookstore's End, No Joy For Sidewalk Seller").
And then there's the 14-minute video documentary about Mysak done by New York University student Alden Peters and posted on YouTube last month.
Is this an "only in New York" story? Or do you know of someone like Mysak where you live?
You just have to read a story with a headline like this:
"Parking 'squat' Bookseller stakes out same spot for 11 years."
It's from today's New York Post and it's the story of how, "eleven years ago, Charles Mysak snagged a primo parking spot on the corner of Columbus Avenue and 68th Street ? and he hasn't budged since. The sidewalk bookseller keeps his inventory piled up in the beat up green '94 Civic, held partially together with duct tape, and feeds the meter $36 a day ? in quarters ? to hold on to the spot."
Yes, he gets parking tickets. The Post says he has about $470 worth outstanding. And he has to move the car once in the morning so that a street sweeper can come through.
But he holds on to the spot.
"In the old days, you could tie your horse to this, and no one would get a ticket," he told The Post. "It's an outrage so much time is being dedicated to taking money from taxpayers ? they're acting as predators. We are taxed, bullied and harassed."
A little further surfing shows that Mysak is something of a media star.
There's Jalopnik.com's report about "Manhattan's mysterious book-filled car," which includes a video of the morning ballet as the car gets moved to let the street sweeper pass by.
The New York Times has stopped by to see and profile Mysak twice. In 2005 ("A Sidewalk Bookseller With A Keen Ear For Outrage") and again in 2010 ("In Bookstore's End, No Joy For Sidewalk Seller").
And then there's the 14-minute video documentary about Mysak done by New York University student Alden Peters and posted on YouTube last month.
Is this an "only in New York" story? Or do you know of someone like Mysak where you live?
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10628494
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