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Check the What's New page for the latest updates, and if you'd like to read a story from a fellow boat-fixer, check out the Notes from Visitors page.
The Story
I bought a 1989 Starcraft Select 171 S I/O Bowrider in 2008. Beautiful boat,
with a wide design and big, shallow and comfortable bow. Captains chairs, 4 speaker stereo, swim deck and tanning pad (or whatever it's called) above the engine. It had nearly perfect interior and it looked well taken care of. Shiny
exterior, interior that smelled good, roller trailer with nice wheels,
and 205 HP OMC Cobra 4.3 V6 and OMC Cobra drive. I wasn't thrilled
about the Cobra drive (they are out of business) but my local dealer
supports and repairs them and I'm very mechanical so it was acceptable
to me.
Unfortunately I found a rotten transom, and created this
site to chronicle my adventures fixing my broken boat. There just isn't enough information on the
web with pictures related to the repair of transoms in I/O boats, so I created this site to collect whatever useful information I could find in one place. I hope it's helpful to someone else.
Many thanks to the guys and gals over at http://forums.iboats.com . They are an amazing group of helpful people. You'll find a number of posts there from me under the forum username "danond".
Disclaimer: I am no expert, but I am good with tools and most things made from metal or wood. This is no beginners project! If you're not comfortable with the tools I've used, this may not be a great project for you to tackle. I am using info I find on the web and from friends in this project. I might be wrong, I might be right. Use the info you find here at your own risk!
A few questions you might have for me:
Why fix an OMC powered boat? OMC has been out of business since the 90's! Because I already own it, and my time doesn't have a dollar value attached to it. Replacing the transom isn't seriously difficult, it's just time consuming, and I love a challenge and the opportunity to learn something new. Plus, when the OMC drive dies, I can throw in a Mercury setup and even keep the original engine, and sell the remaining OMC parts for a mint. What's the downside?
Why fix an old boat? Why not sell this one, cut your losses and move on? I already own it! It's paid for, and serves our family's "needs" really well. Plus, I love how unique this craft is. Very few of them on the water.
Why not pay to have someone else do it? I might be crazy, but it doesn' t mean I'm not practical sometimes! This boat has a street value of around $5K in great shape. That's quite close to the cost to pay someone to fix the transom for me. Why sink $5K plus the purchase price into this thing, especially when I'm capable of doing it myself at a cost of around $1500?
Are you nuts? Yes.
In the end, for me this is kinda fun. I really do enjoy the challenge, and it keeps me from pacing around the kitchen table at night, which makes my wife very happy.
Let's get started: Identifying a Rotten Transom
My I/O Boat Transom Repair Adventures
Subpages (13): Buffing Fiberglass Contact Me Fixing Stress Cracks Identifying a Rotten Transom Installing the New Transom Notes from Visitors Painting the Bilge Prepping for the New Transom Rebuilding the Stringers and Battery Trays Rebuilding Trim and Tilt Cylinders Re-installing the engine and drive Removing the Transom Why I Did It


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The connection between sports cars and allegedly huge—or tiny—male genitals has never been as clear as with this black Miata, decked out with a titanic glans and a pair of galactic balls. If they're that big, shouldn't they be blue?
If the uploader is to be believed, it's a prop for the MTV show Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory.
H/T to Stipistop!

subset: commoncrawl


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Records document top reproductive performance and lower sow mortality rates as Goldsboro Hog Farms' 72,000 sows thrive in pens.
In 1989, the Maxwell Family, owner/operators of Goldsboro Milling Company, which is ranked as one of the nation's top 10 turkey producers and processors, was faced with excess milling capacity. Recognizing the success of their neighbors in the pig business, they decided to diversify.
A call went out to Bob Ivey, veteran pork producer/seedstock supplier, to draft a blueprint for the company's entry into the growing North Carolina swine industry. Jim Maxwell was the family member most interested in the new venture and worked closely with Ivey.
Ivey, with his brother, Ted, had established Ivey Spring Creek Farms as a successful seedstock supplier and production management consulting firm.
Bob Ivey signed on as general manager of the new Goldsboro Hog Farms, headquartered in Goldsboro, NC. "We not only provided production management protocols, but also designed the facilities, provided cash flow projections and business management," Ivey explains. "Fortunately, they are a very progressive company. They allowed me to be very creative in my approach to swine production and were willing to give me all the tools and support needed to be successful."
Goldsboro Hog Farms built their first 1,000-sow farm in 1989. The Maxwells found they liked the hog business. Fueled by ample packing capacity in eastern North Carolina, they spent the next six years in rapid expansion, adding sows in increments of 2,000. By 1995, they had grown to about 66,000 sows.
Goldsboro Hog Farms currently ranks amongst the top 10 pork production systems in the U.S. with about 72,000 sows — all housed in pens during gestation.
Using the description "progressive company" and "pen gestation" in the same breath may seem a contradiction of terms to some — but not to Ivey.
He acknowledges that many systems use gestation stalls very successfully. While he doesn't see crated gestation as a huge animal welfare issue, he recalls the animal welfare pressures being waged in Europe before he began designing the Goldsboro system. He expects that similar animal welfare concerns will someday have an impact on U.S. production schemes.
In the Goldsboro system, newly weaned sows are moved to a row of individual stalls adjoining a breeding pen. Sows are turned into the breeding pens for estrous detection, then returned to the stalls. Boars are brought to the cycling females for stimulation during artificial insemination. Thirty-five days later, sows are pregnancy checked.
The advantages Ivey sees in the short-term stay in the stalls include:
Individual feeding of sows to return them to their prefarrowing body condition;
Heat checking and artificial insemination is easier and more efficient; and
Stalls help avoid injury from fighting or cycling sows riding each other during their most vulnerable post-lactation period.
"From an animal welfare standpoint, I felt I could defend keeping animals individually housed for 35 days, if it ever became an issue," Ivey says.
Sows confirmed pregnant are sorted by size and parity and placed five per 8×10 ft., partially slotted pen. This provides 16 sq. ft. of space for each sow — just 2 sq. ft. more than a typical 2×7 ft. gestation stall. "But they have access to all of the space in the pen," he adds.
"With five sows/pen, you are more able to get them sized up with the same type of animal," Ivey explains. "That's more difficult with larger groups. I think most of the dissatisfaction with pen gestation comes when you try to put too many sows into the pen.
"People don't want to go back to pen gestation because they seem to think it's a sacrifice that they can't manage," he says. "It's obvious by Goldsboro Hog Farms' production levels that it can be managed without too much concern."
Proof in the Performance
When producers become skeptical whether pen gestation will optimize reproductive performance, Ivey points to Goldsboro's top ranking in the AgriMetrics system, then cites the more widely used PigChamp recordkeeping system to reinforce reproductive performance (2003 PigChamp summary data representing 252 farms and approximately 225,000 sows appears in parenthesis below for comparison of key production measures).
Data from 51 Goldsboro farms in full production during a 12-month period ending Sept. 30, 2003 recorded an 84.1% farrowing rate (81.96%), 10.1 pigs born alive/litter (10.57) and 2.48 litters/mated female/year. Pigs weaned/mated female/year tallied in at 22.7 (19.56) with an average litter weight of 141 lb. (79.09), at an average weaning age of 19.2 days (17.81).
Concerns about injury and death loss in pen gestation are laid to rest when he points to the 5.7% (9.1%) mortality rate. Culling rates are a self-imposed 52%. "We don't have the genetic costs in our animals (see sidebar), so we set it at 50%," he explains. "We could easily set it at 45% or whatever."
Average parity for the period was 3.2. Non-productive sow days (NPD) came in at admirable 35.1 days. "When NPDs come in under 40, you can't have many recycles. We really focus on that," he says.
The Benefits of Pens
Ivey ticks off several reasons Goldsboro sows often outperform more popular stall gestation housing, and he offers management tips to make pens work:
Better water intake — High on his list of benefits is the near elimination of urinary tract infections. Ivey believes when sows move around more, they drink more water and, consequently, they urinate more. All are pluses associated with urinary tract health. Better health translates to less sow mortality.
"I don't agree with using water troughs because they restrict water intake," he adds. Nipple waterers are now being replaced with bowl waterers to minimize water wastage — a growing concern as lagoon levels are increasingly scrutinized.
Better floors — With less concrete floor erosion where sows eat and drink, "the water and feed aren't right there eroding the concrete, exposing the pebbles and sharp rocks that can cause feet and leg problems and shoulder sores," he says.
Ivey also believes sanitation is better in pens than stalls because sows work manure through slotted floors better.
Less maintenance — "Based on my experience, after 10 years, individual crates wear out. Broken crates can cause injuries," he concedes.
Sow condition — Typically, feeding levels are adjusted only twice. At weaning, sows are placed on full feed until bred and fed individually in stalls for 35 days to regain proper body condition. After passing the 35-day pregnancy check, sows are moved to pen gestation. Feed is cut back until their last 30 days of gestation, when feeding levels are increased based on parity and condition. "Because of the competition in the pens, the last 30 days seem to be the best time to adjust feeding levels," Ivey explains.
Mixing and fighting — The sows' 35-day stay in the stalls allows them time to recover from farrowing, nursing and weaning stresses. Once confirmed pregnant, groups of five sows or six gilts are matched up by size and parity. "You need to use some common sense," Ivey explains. "You don't put a 500-lb. sow with a 300-lb., first-parity gilt. There is some fighting, but not very much. It's not a problem."
Sow health — "Another advantage is sows have nose-to-tail contact, so in these large sow herds you can stabilize (disease) subpopulations a whole lot quicker because the animals are better exposed to each other," he says. Vaccination and medication is easier in pens if done when sows are eating. "You don't have to reach through the (crate) bars to treat them," he adds.
Catching recycles — Occasionally, an open sow will slip through or abort her litter after the 35-day pregnancy check. "Another advantage for pen gestation," says Ivey. "It is easy to recognize recycling sows in pens when they ride other sows."
Whether recycling sows are bred again depends on their history. If she has recycled before or she is older, she may be culled. Those that are rebred are sent back through the breeding area stalls, pregnancy checking and regrouping procedure.
Converts — "We've bought a few farms that had gestation stalls, but we've converted them all over (to pens)," Ivey explains. In one case, during the early expansion years, another genetic line was being used in about half of the Goldsboro units. The company was convinced their animals performed better in gestation stalls. But when it came time to double the sow herd, they built another 1,000-sow barn with gestation pens. With the same genetic lines and the same manager overseeing both barns, "the side with the pen gestation outperformed the other," he says. "The unit has now been converted to all pens."
Ivey has had similar reactions when managers from crated gestation units are hired to run a Goldsboro facility. "Most everyone likes our system better. They realize it's easier to move sows, the animals appear more comfortable and it's easier to find recycles," he says.
Hand feeding — "The only thing employees don't like about our system is that we make them hand feed the sows; that's a pet peeve of mine and it's not negotiable," he explains. "I believe in hand feeding because I believe in the people-to-pig contact. When you hand feed, if all five sows don't come to eat, you know you have a problem in that pen." The hand feeding also reinforces a positive association between people and the sows, which reduces stress when sows are moved. Records indicate gestation feeding averages 4.43 lb./sow/day.
Closing Thoughts
"Philosophically, I don't like individual crates all the way through (gestation and farrowing). That's why our system is designed with pen gestation. I'm not saying an animal is less happy because it's in an individual crate.
"All I can say is, the animals seem to be more comfortable in pen gestation and that's reflected, I think, in their performance, with the added benefits of reduced maintenance costs," Ivey explains.
Carts Ease Stress at Weaning
Custom-made weaning carts have made weaning day less stressful on pigs and people at Goldsboro Hog Farms. General Manager Bob Ivey got the idea from the caged-turkey transport trucks. The four-tiered carts on large caster wheels have eight compartments, and hold about 50 pigs (depending on size).
Compartments open at both ends of the cages, making it easy to load them directly from the farrowing crates. Pigs are sized and sexed at weaning, making it easy to stock nursery pens and minimize sorting later.
On weaning day, the transport truck arrives at a predetermined time. Empty crates are rolled off to make room for the loaded carts. Empty carts are used for the next week's weaning.
"We have a set of scales at every farm where each cart is weighed before it is rolled on to the environmentally controlled truck," Ivey explains. "This not only gives us the total weight, but we can see the weight distribution. This helps us keep up with the number of pigs that weigh less than 8 or 10 lb.
"A lot of people focus on pigs out the door, but they do it at the expense of quality or pig weight. By weighing the pigs, we can focus on pounds of pork weaned, as well as numbers weaned per sow," he continues.
Weaning age ranges from 14 to 22 days; pig weights generally average about 13 lb. Ivey prefers the slightly heavier weights at weaning because it usually means the pigs are a little older. "Then, we don't have to spend the extra money putting a couple of pounds on a pig with a more complex, expensive diet," he says. "There's an age factor, but there is also a size component to that. If you have a heavier pig, you can fudge on those diets a little bit more. For every pound heavier a pig is at weaning, he will come out of the nursery 3-4 lb. heavier."
One 50-pig cart fills two nursery pens. "Usually, we only have to handle each pig twice — once to put him in the cart, and once to take him out and place him in the nursery pen. It's efficient and very low stress on the pigs," he says, adding: "It makes the pigs happy and it makes the people happy because they aren't bending over to sort pigs again."
Unique Genetic Combinations
Goldsboro Hog Farms has partnered with Ivey Spring Creek Farm (ISCF) in a genetic program unique to the swine industry. The ISCF program incorporates two breeds — Chester Whites and Durocs — recognized for their meat quality attributes in the National Pork Board-funded genetic evaluation programs.
On the female side, the ISCF Chester White maternal dam has excellent pork quality and sow productivity traits. "This female is a key component for the quality in the ISCF Chester-Landrace-Large White cross females used extensively in the Goldsboro Hog Farm system," explains Bob Ivey. "They are bred to the ISCF Duroc terminal sire to produce pork with excellent color and firmness that is juicy and tender. We call this our 'Golden Delicious' pork." The Duroc, Landrace and Large White lines originated in Denmark and were bred and adapted for the heavier market weights in the U.S.
"The majority of the Goldsboro system is the Chester White bred to Landrace to produce the grandparents; then they are bred to Large Whites to produce the parent sows, which are bred to Duroc boars," he explains.
"The beauty of our program, by having three different white breeds, is I don't have to farrow a lot of purebred animals," he continues. "Heterosis is a freebie. More genetic progress is made through heterosis than anything — especially for maternal (reproductive) traits. By taking advantage of heterosis, we can take a few Chester White females and breed them to Landrace, then breed those F1s (first-cross) females to Large Whites to produce the parent females needed. Basically, we've captured 100% heterosis at every step except the great-grandparent (ggp) level. We have very few animals at the ggp level.
"So, in other words, 1,000 Chester White ggps at a 50% selection rate can produce 5,000 grandparents. Those 5,000 can produce 25,000 parent animals. It's very efficient multiplication and the lines are distinctively different."
ISCF was founded in 1976. Bob and Ted Ivey, the principal owners, currently supply genetics to companies producing over 2.8 million market hogs annually.


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Correction: Due to an error in the Post's data analysis, an earlier version of this story misstated the number of counties with the nation's highest participation rates in federal disability programs. The correct calculated estimate is 102 counties, not 136. The story, maps and graphics have been revised. For further explanation of the data error, please see the revised methodology box.
The lobby at the pain-management clinic had become crowded with patients, so relatives had gone outside to their trucks to wait, and here, too, sat Desmond Spencer, smoking a 9 a.m. cigarette and watching the door. He tried stretching out his right leg, knowing these waits can take hours, and winced. He couldn't sit easily for long, not anymore, and so he took a sip of soda and again thought about what he should do.
He hadn't had a full-time job in a year. He was skipping meals to save money. He wore jeans torn open in the front and back. His body didn't work like it once had. He limped in the days, and in the nights, his hands would swell and go numb, a reminder of years spent hammering nails. His right shoulder felt like it was starting to go, too.
Disabled America: Between 1996 and 2015, the number of working-age adults receiving federal disability payments increased significantly across the country — but nowhere more so than in rural America. In this series, The Washington Post explores how disability is shaping the culture, economy and politics of these small communities.
Part 2: Generations, disabled One family. Four generations of disability benefits. Will it continue?
Part 3: Disabled and disdained How disability benefits divided this rural community between those who work and those who don't
Part 4: 'I am a hard worker' Some say people on disability just need to get back to work. It's not that easy.
Part 5: After the check is gone Her disability check was gone, and now the only option left was also one of the worst.
But did all of this pain mean he was disabled? Or was he just desperate?
He wouldn't even turn 40 for a few more months.
An hour passed, and his cellphone rang. He picked it up, said hello and hung up — another debt collector. He rubbed his right knee. Maybe it would get better. Maybe he would still find a job.
His mother had written a number the night before and told him to call it, and he had told her he'd think about it. She wanted him to apply for disability, like she had, like his girlfriend had, and like his stepfather, whom he now saw shuffling out of the pain clinic, hunched over his walker, reaching for a hand-rolled cigarette. Spencer got out of the truck. He lit his own.
"Remember we were talking about it last night?" he asked Gene Ruby. "Remember we were talking about signing up?"
"Yeah," said Ruby, 64.
"Remember Mama said there was a number you got to call?"
"She's got the number," Ruby said. "The Social Security number."
Spencer kept asking questions. What would Social Security want to know? How often are people denied? But he didn't mention the one that had been bothering him the most lately: Was he a failure?
"There's a stigma about it," Spencer said, thinking aloud. "Disabled. Disability. Drawing a check. But if you're putting food on the table, does it matter?"
Then: "I could probably still work."
He put his stepfather's walker in the truck bed, got behind the wheel, started another cigarette and, pulling out of the pain clinic's parking lot, headed for home.
Desmond Spencer, 39, and his girlfriend, Tasha Harris, 34, hang out at the house they share with Spencer's mother and stepfather in Beaverton, Ala.
The decision that burdened Desmond Spencer was one that millions of Americans have faced over the past two decades as the number of people on disability has surged. Between 1996 and 2015, the number of working-age adults receiving disability climbed from 7.7 million to 13 million. The federal government this year will spend an estimated $192 billion on disability payments, more than the combined total for food stamps, welfare, housing subsidies and unemployment assistance.
The rise in disability has emerged as yet another indicator of a widening political, cultural and economic chasm between urban and rural America.
Across large swaths of the country, disability has become a force that has reshaped scores of mostly white, almost exclusively rural communities, where as many as one-third of working-age adults live on monthly disability checks, according to a Washington Post analysis of Social Security Administration statistics.
Rural America experienced the most rapid increase in disability rates over the past decade, the analysis found, amid broad growth in disability that was partly driven by demographic changes that are now slowing as disabled baby-boomers age into retirement.
The increases have been worse in working-class areas, worse still in communities where residents are older, and worst of all in places with shrinking populations and few immigrants.
Disability rates by county in 2004
Percent on disability:
Disability rates by county in 2015
Disability rate includes individuals on SSI, SSDI, or both. Data suppressed in some counties due to small population.
Sources: Social Security Adminstration SSDI Annual Report, 2004 and 2015; Social Security Adminstration SSI Annual Report, 2004 and 2015
All but two of the 102 counties with the highest rates — where at minimum about one in six working-age adults receive disability — were rural, the analysis found, although the vast majority of people on disability live in cities and suburbs.
The counties — spread out from northern Michigan, through the boot heel of Missouri and Appalachia, and into the Deep South — are largely racially homogeneous. Sixteen of the counties were majority black, but the remaining counties were, on average, 90 percent white. In the 2016 presidential election, the majority-white counties voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, whose rhetoric of a rotting nation with vast joblessness often reflects lived experiences in these communities.
Most people aren't employed when they apply for disability — one reason applicant rates skyrocketed during the recession. Full-time employment would, in fact, disqualify most applicants. And once on it, few ever get off, their ranks uncounted in the national unemployment rate, which doesn't include people on disability.
The decision to apply, in many cases, is a decision to effectively abandon working altogether. For the severely disabled, this choice is, in essence, made for them. But for others, it's murkier. Aches accumulate. Years pile up. Job prospects diminish.
"What drives people to [apply for] disability is, in many cases, the repeated loss of work and inability to find new employment," said David Autor, an economist with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied rising disability rates. "Many people who are applying would say, 'Look, I would like to work, but no one would employ me.' "
While disability rates for working-age people have increased nationwide since 2004, rural counties have seen the steepest increases overall.
Change in disability rate for each group of counties in people age 18–64
Most RURAL
small metro
most URBAN
Disability rate includes individuals on SSDI, SSI, or both.
Sources: Social Security Adminstration SSDI Annual Report, 2004 and 2015; Social Security Adminstration SSI Annual Report, 2004 and 2015
In that position now, Spencer, a slight man with luminous blue eyes, drove deeper into western Alabama. He steered through Walker County, where nearly one in five working-age adults are on disability, and into Lamar County, where the disability rate has more than doubled over the past 20 years, arriving in the town of Beaverton, population 273, where even the 55-year-old mayor is drawing a disability check.
He pulled up to a small house alongside a quiet country road, got out and looked around. There was only forest and hills and sun. "Man, I love it out here," he said.
"Ain't going nowhere," Ruby agreed.
Spencer, who wears mud-caked boots and camouflage and brags of burning trash "like a proper redneck," has grown so enamored of rural life that he's sometimes surprised when he remembers that he spent most of his life elsewhere. He grew up just outside of Peoria, Ill., dropped out of school at 14, secured his GED, served two stints in prison for felony burglary before he turned 20 and started working roofing jobs, following other family members into manual labor, like his grandfather who built bridges, and his mother, who worked at a stove factory.
His work as a roofer had been a constant thread through his life, from one state to the next, one job to another. And so it had been again in 2005 when he followed family members to Lamar County, which is 86 percent white and 11 percent black, and was then navigating a long decline in population and manufacturing jobs — one plant moved to Mexico, another to the Dominican Republic. He nonetheless found a roofing job quickly, settling into a life that, for a time, felt as safe as it was comfortable. But then came the recession, and the uneven recovery, and jobs started drying up, and four years ago, as the county poverty rate climbed to 24 percent, the roofing company let him go.
He figured he'd find more work right away. But weeks became months, and he started doing what he calls "odds and ends" — work as a welder, a ranch hand, even a full-time garbage collector — but nothing restored the stability that had gone missing.
He opened the front door to his house. He walked past a small sign in a living room cabinet that said, "BELIEVE in the beauty of your dreams," and into a bathroom that he had recently remodeled and where another sign said, "DON'T QUIT: Stick to the fight when you're hardest hit; it's when things seem worst that you must not quit."
He had been reading a book lately about the power of positivity. He would sometimes think about it when putting in job applications, or when he was behind his house, looking at his possessions. There was the old Kia that hadn't run in two years. The pile of aluminum cans for which he'd make 40 cents on the pound. The dozens of used tires a repair shop had paid him to haul away. He never knew what would turn out to be worth something.
He was blessed, he always tried to remind himself.
But increasingly there were days when Spencer knew he was faking a belief, once so strong, that everything would work out. There were days like today, when he sat in a pew in a small church in Lamar County, listening to members of the congregation ask for prayers for health issues:
"My mother-in-law is in the hospital this week, and she has some heart problems," a man said.
"My body is not cooperating with my job whatsoever," a woman said.
"I got my back surgery," another man said. "I hope it takes this time."
An hour later, Spencer was home again. His knee was hurting once more, as it had on and off ever since he fell from a roof during a construction job two years ago. He'd never had it checked out because he'd never had insurance, and he didn't mention it now because everyone at the house seemed worse off than he was. His mother, Karen Ruby, 60, who has cirrhosis of the liver, was sitting at the kitchen table with her head in her hands, saying, "I don't know when I'm going to be able to get back into church." His stepfather was stooped beside her, next to a wheelchair, smoking a cigarette. His girlfriend, Tasha Harris, 34, a thin, ashen woman whose back was often thrown out, was upstairs in the dark after leaving church early because she hadn't felt well.
"I need angel food cake," his mother told him before he headed out to the store. "Write it down."
"Angel food cake? All right, I'll be back," he said, walking toward the door.
"I feel like crap," said Harris, who had come downstairs to see him off.
"I'm sorry," Spencer quietly told her, then went outside to his truck and pulled onto the road.
This is how Spencer spends most of his days, ferrying to the dollar store and back, collecting soda, cigarettes and whatever else his family may want, and consoling them when he's around. Most days he doesn't mind. He likes feeling like the strong one when it seems as though almost everyone he knows is either applying for or already on disability. Just the night before, during a family dinner, it had struck him again.
"She walks, and it breaks her bones," his cousin, who applied for disability after a nervous breakdown, had said of another relative receiving disability.
"She falls a lot," added his aunt, who collects $733 monthly in disability checks because of back pain.
Spencer, listening to the conversation, had looked around. At the table was another cousin, who has bipolar disorder and receives $701 per month. Beside her was her boyfriend, whose mom had applied for disability, too. Spencer glanced at the ceiling and sighed.
"The whole world is on disability," he said.
"It's a tough world," someone else said.
And now that world was spread out before him as he drove through downtown Beaverton, past a value store, a post office that closes at noon, a bank that shuttered during the recession, a gas station that hasn't been open for as long as Spencer has been here.
He saw a large roadside banner that said, "APPLY NOW IMMEDIATE OPENINGS," and cursed to himself. He didn't know how many times he'd gone in that upholstery factory and asked about a job, any job, and was turned away. He saw another factory, this one an equipment supplier, where he thought he'd need an act of Congress to get hired. Up ahead was a horse-trailer shop. Three consecutive months he had gone through the door, and each time they'd said, "Next month, try us." Meanwhile, he tried to sign up for a welding class at a community college, but failed the enrollment math exam.
He pulled up to the Piggly-Wiggly. He collected cake mix and three 12-packs of Mountain Dew for Harris, who he knows can go through 24 cans in a day, and was driving home, passing everywhere he couldn't get a job, when he thought of another opportunity. There was still that place that might need help with welding, a skill he'd picked up after he lost his roofing job. He had told himself he'd go first thing on Monday morning. Arrive by 8:30 a.m. Show the enthusiasm and dedication of someone worth hiring.
Walking back into his house, he placed the cake mix on the counter and heard his mother, who was in her room, with the curtains drawn and the television on, holding an unlit cigarette.
"Desmond?" she said, her voice raspy from a case of strep throat. "Is that black lighter in there?"
"Black lighter?" he said.
"I got a sore throat," she said.
"I don't see it," he said of the lighter.
"Me and Gene, neither of us got a lighter now," she said.
He began placing empty soda cans into a plastic bin and clearing the kitchen table of the dishes from the night before, then heard Harris at the bottom of the steps.
"Baby?" she said. "My head is still killing me."
"I got you something for your headache," he said, handing her some medicine and a 12-pack of Mountain Dew, and went back to the kitchen.
"Desmond," Harris softly called after him.
"Yeah?" he said, returning.
"Do you have a cigarette?"
He gave her one, finished with the kitchen, then limped to the living room. He lowered himself onto the couch, his knee hurting worse than earlier, and flipped on the television.
Something had to change.
Everyone in his life has been telling him what that something is.
You're hurting more and more, his mother said. And not getting any younger.
There aren't jobs for you here, a friend said. Think that'll change anytime soon?
We all need help now and again, his girlfriend said. Don't be ashamed of being on disability.
You're a grown man, his stepfather said. Bring in some money.
That was what Spencer was thinking about — money, and not having any — when one day Harris found him sitting alone on the back porch in the quiet, going through another cigarette. "Checks are in," she said of his parents' monthly disability payments, which are cumulatively worth $3,616 and support everyone in a house that, at that moment, was low on just about everything.
"We're going to the store," Harris said.
"How you getting there?" he asked.
"The truck."
"It ain't got no gas, though."
"I got to take your mom to the bank."
"Maybe she'll loan you 10 for gas."
Harris disappeared back into the house, and Spencer went back to his cigarettes and thoughts. It didn't seem right to him, living off his parents' disability checks and borrowing money from them. But he felt trapped. He couldn't leave Lamar County with his mother so sick. And the only money he had coming in was the monthly $425 an elderly friend paid him to tend his horses and keep him company on lonely afternoons, and it was never enough to cover everything. This month it was socks. Harris needed socks. And what kind of man can't afford socks? His grandfather used to tell him that a man isn't a man unless he owns land, and now here he was, years later, not feeling like one at all.
He found Harris in the kitchen. "Ask him for $40," she told him. "And I'll get 10 more from him to buy socks."
Gene Ruby was at the computer when Spencer approached him. The question came quickly and quietly. "Could I borrow 40? And give it back to you right here soon?" he asked. "I promise."
A few hours after pocketing the money, Spencer climbed back into the truck Gene made the payments on and started it with the gas Karen had paid for. Harris got in beside him. They had been together for seven years and rarely disagreed, except for that day two years before when Harris said she was thinking of applying for disability on account of back pain. He told her not to do it. People would look down on them. They would find jobs. Don't lose hope.
A light blinked on the dashboard.
"Transmission's hot," Harris said. "I told you it did that to me the other day."
He pressed down on the accelerator.
"No, don't do that," she said. "Just put it in neutral and coast. Try not to mash the gas at all."
"We're running it into the ground, is what we're doing," he said, lighting another cigarette.
Harris looked at him. She could tell he was getting frustrated. Just about everything these days made him that way. He had begun complaining more, not just about the truck or the pain in his knees and hands, but about all of Lamar County. He told her there would never be jobs here for them. Maybe she had been right about applying for disability. His injuries weren't getting better, and he wasn't getting hired, and how much longer could he ask for help with groceries? Help with gas? Help with transportation? Help with everything?
He moved the truck out of neutral and back into drive. The store was 20 miles up the road in Hamilton, the largest town in the area, with a population of 6,814. Harris's brother and his wife lived on its outskirts, and in the falling light, they went to visit, pulling up to a tidy mobile home set beside a large field. Harris's sister-in-law, Chastity, who was working full time at a calling center, came outside. Then followed Harris's brother, Josh, 28, broad-shouldered and shirtless. They handed a plate of barbecue pork to Spencer and Harris, both of whom had skipped lunch that day. The plate went back and forth between them.
"I just went and got a job at Wrangler," Josh said of a distribution center in nearby Hackleburg.
Spencer stopped eating. He looked up.
"Is that right, man?" Spencer asked, and Josh nodded. "That's great. I'm proud of you. Man, I'm happy about that. I'm happy you got that."
"Me, too," Josh said. "It pays good."
"Monday, I'm going to go back to that shop where . . . I heard they need help," Spencer said. "Hopefully, I can weasel my way in there."
"You can," Josh said. "Put it in your mind, and you can do it."
"I had an inspiration book," Spencer said. "You wake up and put it in your head: 'God's got my back. I got this job.' "
There was a moment of quiet.
"I'm glad you got that, man," Spencer said again. "I'm proud of you."
"Sometimes, it's just the right place at the right time."
Spencer and Harris finished the barbecue, hugged their relatives goodbye and got back into the truck. He drove to a strip mall that had a Shoppers Value Foods, a Check Into Cash and a title loan shop. He glanced at a sign outside a Sonic fast-food restaurant: "Now Hiring All Shifts." He sometimes considered applying for a fast-food job. But how, after making $20 an hour at some jobs, could he take one paying $7.25?
He parked and went inside the grocery store.
Desmond Spencer howls with one of his mother's dogs. Several wheelchairs around the family's house and two on the porch are used for seating. Spencer strives to remain upbeat about his situation, saying, "I'd rather be fake happy than real sad."
Spencer was looking at a piece of paper on the coffee table. It was the number to the Social Security office his mother had given him. He and Harris sat on the couch in the living room, and she handed him a telephone.
"You got to call," she said.
"I'm nervous," he said.
"Don't be nervous," she said. "They're not going to reach through the phone and get you."
He didn't say anything for a moment, just held the phone.
"What do I do and say?" he asked.
"Call that number and do whatever they tell you to do."
He took in a breath and exhaled slowly.
"I guess I'll call," he said, punching in the number, and then came a voice on the other end, with that question again, the one he rarely had the courage to ask himself:
"Are you disabled?"
"Yes, ma'am," he said.
"How long have you been disabled?"
"Two years."
"How are you supporting yourself?"
"Living off my mom."
"Is this a permanent disability?"
"Uhh," he began. "I don't think . . . "
He looked at the floor and leaned forward.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "Yeah, I don't think it's getting no better."
He scheduled an appointment for an interview at the local Social Security office the following month. He hung up, stood and, appearing dazed, told Harris, "I didn't like it at all." She gave him a sympathetic look and left him alone on the couch.
He was there again four days later on a Monday morning.
The entire house was dark. Spencer was in his pajamas, watching television. Harris was soon beside him, also in pajamas. "I think I'm getting sick," she said, and he didn't answer. She went to another room and came back with Ruby's laptop, which she uses every Monday morning to look at job listings.
"I ain't checked it in a week," she said.
"Oh my God," he sighed, flipping through channels.
"Do you know anything about pop-ups?" she asked, looking at the computer. "Man, I've had, like, a hundred pop-ups."
"Look, the new 'Walking Dead,' " Spencer said, coming to another channel.
She pulled up her email and clicked on one that listed service positions within 25 miles. "Okay," she said. "Here we go." She saw three postings: "Customer Service/Telecommute," "Telecommute Consultant" and "Product Tester." She didn't investigate any of them, instead going back to her inbox. She found another email with more listings.
"Erber?" she asked. "We don't even have an Erber place around here."
"Uber," Spencer said.
"Uber, Erber, whatever," she said, closing the computer.
An hour passed, then another, and Spencer stayed on the couch. He would not apply for the welding job today. He wanted to focus on securing disability.
"I got to go get dressed," he said, looking down at his clothing. "What a loser."
He returned in torn jeans and, with nothing better to do, went outside. He limped to the truck and fiddled with jumper cables. He set a fire inside an iron bin and burned some trash. He inspected a sheet of aluminum he had found, wondering how much he could sell it for. He walked into the woods and walked out. He looked at the road. A car hadn't passed in a long while. It was 1 in the afternoon. The day already felt over.
About the data:
Editor's note: The Post's earlier calculated estimates of working-age disability rates for counties incorrectly included some non-disabled children. The Social Security Administration data tables for residents receiving benefits in each county mix disabled adult children and non-disabled minor dependents in the same category. The Post has revised the estimates to remove the minor dependents. Below is an explanation of the methodology for the revised estimate.
There are 13 million working-age Americans — ages 18 to 64 — receiving disability payments. This number includes every working-age person who receives benefits through the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program or both. The Social Security Administration publishes those numbers for the nation for each year dating to 1996. An annual rate was calculated using working-age Americans.
The Washington Post calculated a disability prevalence estimate among the working-age population at the county level. The Social Security Administration publishes county recipients of SSI and SSDI disabled workers. The SSA also publishes county-level counts of people receiving support under both SSI and SSDI. Those figures were subtracted to avoid double counting. SSA does not publish county figures for two smaller groups of working-age disabled beneficiaries in the SSDI program, disabled adult children and disabled widows and widowers. SSA publishes broader categories with a mix of disabled and non-disabled beneficiary children and widows and widowers at the county level. The Post used published figures for the disabled adult children and widows and widowers groups in each state to apportion the number across the counties according to each county's share of the state's beneficiary children, widows and widowers. The estimated rate was created with the county working-age population. To make a rate the Post uses resident population age 18-64. Beneficiaries move from disability programs to retirement programs. Under current rules some beneficiaries do not reach full retirement age until between 65 and 66, but the SSA tables do not provide counts of that group by state or county.
The Post classified counties from urban to rural using qualifications defined by the six-step scale of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics. Counties were grouped into three sets to divide metro areas with at least 1 million people, smaller metro areas and non-metro areas.
Spending figures were taken from the proposed 2017 federal budget and SSA's projected payments for 2017. Social Security Disability Insurance ($149 billion) was combined with Supplemental Security Income for people with disabilities ($43 billion). The spending does not include money states spent to supplement the programs.
Five-year data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey were used for county-level demographics. The county estimated rates and the numbers used to create those rates for 2004 and 2015 are available here.
Editor's picks:
The homeless man who went to Harvard
He graduated from law school with U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts and now lives on the streets


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If there was ever one birthday party we would die to be invited to, it was Christian Combs's (aka Diddy's son) mega star-studded Sweet 16 over the weekend. (Dear Diddy, did our invite get lost in the mail?)
Hollywood's newest besties Selena Gomez and Kendall Jenner & Kylie Jenner all hit up the party together in super-chic, all-black outfits, documenting the night on Instagram with some adorable snaps.
Selena and Kylie both shared the same photo, mimicking each other and captioning the pic "Selena & roses" and "Kylie & Roses"—which, with the social media popularity of these two, pretty much almost broke the Internet!
More From Seventeen
MORE! Selena and Taylor Take A Break, Find New BFFs Names Lily
Check out a recap of their night, below!
What do you think about Selena's new friendship? Which other stars birthday parties would you love to attend? Sound off in the comments below!


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By Jeff Wald
CINCINNATI (AP) — Andy Dalton gets another chance to show that he and the Bengals can be winners in the playoffs. It's been a long time since that's happened.
Dalton threw four touchdown passes during a 42-14 victory over the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday, the first step in a series of events that broke the Bengals' way and got them a division title.
The Bengals (10-5) clinched a playoff spot shortly after their game ended, when Miami lost to Buffalo. They wrapped up the AFC North title a few hours later when Baltimore lost to New England, which currently has the No. 2 seed for the playoffs with the Bengals at No. 3.
Dalton became only the fifth quarterback in NFL history to lead his team to the playoffs in each of his first three seasons. He has thrown 31 touchdown passes, one behind Carson Palmer's club record from 2005.
"To be in the playoffs every year since I've been here is huge," said Dalton, who was 27 of 38 for 366 yards without an interception. "It gives you a chance to accomplish the ultimate goal."
The Vikings (4-10-1) were looking for another playoff-jumbling upset. They'd knocked off the Bears and the Eagles in the last three weeks, and were hoping to make the Bengals sweat it out a bit longer. Instead, Cincinnati returned a fumble to the 4-yard line, setting up one touchdown, and linebacker Vincent Rey returned an interception 25 yards for another score as the Bengals put it away early.
"Well, we did take a step back," said Matt Cassel, who was 13 of 27 for 114 yards with one touchdown and three interceptions.
Five things learned from the Bengals' breakthrough win:
A TITLE TEAM: When the Bengals started the season, they set three overriding goals: Go unbeaten at home, win the AFC North and get deep into the playoffs. After Sunday, they can start checking items off the list. They're 7-0 at home and they've got their first division title since 2009 and their eighth in their 46 seasons overall. It's the first time they've reached the playoffs three seasons in a row.
Still in play: They haven't won a playoff game since 1990, a stretch of futility that's tied for seventh-longest in NFL history. Winning the division title gives them at least one home playoff game, which could help get that breakthrough win.
HARDY AT HOME: The Bengals have scored more than 40 points in each of their last four at Paul Brown Stadium, a club record. They're 7-0 at home for the first time since 1988, when they went unbeaten and won two playoff games on their way to a Super Bowl loss to San Francisco. They finish the regular season at home next Sunday against Baltimore.
DALTON'S PLACE: The third-year quarterback has been particularly good at home, throwing for five, three, three and four TDs in his last four games at Paul Brown Stadium. The spotlight will be on him more than anyone else heading into the playoffs. He had miserable games during playoff losses at Houston that ended each of the last two seasons.
"We're in a really good spot right now," Dalton said. "We've just got to keep it going."
GENEROUS VIKINGS: Minnesota's defense has come apart down the stretch. The Vikings have allowed 467 points this season, the most in the NFL. They've given up 40 points four times in the last nine games, although their offense was responsible for two of the touchdowns on Sunday because of turnovers.
"I can't speak for the whole defense but for me, it's embarrassing," defensive end Jared Allen said. "I don't know what to say. I still remember the days when we thrived on defense around here."
PETERSON'S HOBBLED: Running back Adrian Peterson missed last week's game because of a sprained right foot. He was limited in practice last week but wanted to play. He wasn't the same, managing 45 yards on 11 carries before coach Leslie Frazier benched him in the second half with the Bengals in control.
"I lobbied a little bit (to stay in), but is it really worth the risk?" Peterson said. "I don't feel like I played with as much confidence as I need. I was a little hesitant. My body is just not responding like I want it to."
(? Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
Source: CBS Minnesota


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Whether you spent the evening tossing and turning or stayed out way past your bedtime last night, you're probably paying for it this morning with a matching set of luggage under your eyes.
But putting on your makeup as usual won't help you hide those puffy eyes. That's because makeup looks different on your skin when you're tired. It actually sits on the top of your skin, so less is more.Try these makeup tricks to fake looking more awake.
QUIZ: Find Your Best Eye Makeup
Wake Up Your Peepers
To refresh your eyes before applying makeup, I like Rohto's minty eye drops. The amazing cooling effect from the drops actually makes you feel more awake.
If your eyes are puffy (or if you've had a crying jag), go a little heavier on the eyeliner. A little extra dark liner on the top lid at the lash line will help to disguise the redness and puffiness. Anything too light or shimmery will just make your eyes look more swollen. Instead, choose dark colors, such as a taupe eye shadow on the lid, to help recede any puffiness.
One of my favorite tricks is to dab a cream highlighter—any luminizer will do—right in the middle of the top lid at the lash line (right above the pupil). But remember, just a tiny bit. It creates a little highlight and sparkle and makes your eyes look brighter and white.
Also, don't forget to curl your lashes! Open up those tired, puffy eyes with a good curling and an extra coat or two of mascara.
Add Some Light
Use a concealer with light reflective particles in it (like Clarins Instant Light Eye Perfecting Base or YSL Touche Eclat) to brighten up the under eye area. Concealers in peachy tones also cut the darkness from under the eyes.
Warm Up Cheeks and Lips
Hung over skin tends to be more sallow and pale and a bit lifeless looking. Using a touch of extra blush, especially something peachy, will bring life back into the face. Pinky peaches are more flattering because they warm you up. Stay away from anything too cold looking, such as champagne tones, that make you look more drained.
MORE: Easy Grape Puffy Eye Treatment
I love By Terry Rose de Rose liquid blush in Coral Rose. The liquid formula dries into a luminescent matte blush and gives a wonderful soft and subtle glow.
If you have an oily complexion or prefer powder in general, powder blush with some shimmer or luminescence can help brighten your complexion. MAC's Mineralize Blushes are fantastic. They come in really pretty colors and add shimmer without looking like you're sparkling.
Or use a cheek stain in peach or pink tones, such as Benefit's Posietint poppy-pink tinted lip and cheek stain, just to give flush of color to your lips and cheeks.
Lips stains also give pale lips a dose of color. Hourglass has great lip stains, which look like your own natural lips. After all, you want to look like you, only a little bit better.


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STORICO INCONTRO TRA McGUINNESS ED ELISABETTA II. COMUNICATO DI GERRY ADAMS
Mar is eol daoibh uilig, fuair Martin Mc Guinness cuireadh ó Co-operation (The Journal)
Ireland a bheith i láthair ag ócáid i mBéal Feirste an tseachtain seo chugainn chun na healaíonn agus an cultúr ar fud na hÉireann a cheiliúradh.
As you all know Martin McGuinness has received an invitation from Co-operation Ireland to attend an event in Belfast next week to celebrate the arts and culture across Ireland.
The Co-operation Ireland event will also be attended by the President of Ireland, the Queen of England and by First Minister Peter Robinson.
It is unconnected with the Jubilee.
Mar go gciallaíonn seo go gcasfaí Martin Mc Guinness le banríon na Breataine beidh seo iontach deacair ag Poblachtaigh agus ar Náisiúnaithe a d'fhulaing faoi lámha fhórsaí na Breataine in Éirinn thar na blianta.
Because this involves Martin meeting the British monarch this will cause difficulty for Republicans and nationalists who have suffered at the hands of British forces in Ireland over many decades.
However, in the context of conflict resolution and national reconciliation, as well as our own republican national objectives, the Sinn Fein Ard Chomhairle agreed that Martin should accept the invitation.
This is a significant initiative involving major political and symbolic challenges for Irish republicans.
As the record of the peace process demonstrates Irish republicans have frequently been prepared to take bold and historic initiatives and risks for peace to break stalemates and find agreements.
Is Sinn Féin páirtí Poblachtach Éireannach agus is Ath aontú na hÉireann agus neamhspleachas na hÉireann ár príomh chuspóir polaitiúil.
Sinn Fein is an Irish republican party whose primary political objective is the re-unification and independence of Ireland.
We have a coherent and viable strategy for the achievement of these democratic objectives, including the end of partition and unifying the people of this island through a genuine process of national reconciliation and transformation.
So, Sinn Féin is about nation building. Sinn Féin is for an Ireland of Equals in which there is space for everyone and for all identities.
An Ireland in which all our citizens can live comfortably and in harmony and mutual respect. Sinn Féin is for a new dispensation in which a citizen can be Irish and unionist.
Where one can also claim Britishness and be comfortable on this island Poblacht Nua ina bhfuil Glas agus Oraiste aontaithe – Sin í an fís atá againne.
Our vision of a new Republic is one in which the Orange and Green unite in a cordial union. Today's decision reflects a confident, dynamic, forward looking Sinn Féin demonstrating our genuine desire to embrace our unionist neighbours.
It reflects the equality and parity of esteem arrangements which are now in place. Tuigim go mbeidh an cinneadh seo crua agus an-deacair ag daoine, go háirithe ag íobartaigh fhorasaí na Breataine in Éirinn.
I accept that this decision will cause genuine and understandable difficulties for some people, not least some of the victims of the British crown forces in Ireland.
It is clear that legacy issues have to be dealt with and Sinn Féin will continue to engage in that work. Today's decision is the right thing to do at the right time and for the right reasons.
I ask all Sinn Féin members and all republicans to support this initiative. I would urge everyone, everywhere on this island to take ownership of our future. The people of this island deserve the very best society that can be created.
I believe this initiative it will contribute in a symbolic yet significant way to this necessary work.


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This was a talk hosted by the Moore Institute and the Centre for Irish Studies, National University of Ireland Galway, to launch the book: Derek Gladwin and Christine Cusick (eds), Unfolding Irish Landscapes: Tim Robinson, Culture and Environment (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016). I am very grateful to Derek Gladwin and Christine Cusick for the honour of the invitation and to Nessa Cronin of the Centre for Irish Studies, and Dan Carey and John Morrissey of the Moore Institute for the hospitality and collegial academic engagement. The interdisciplinary conversations convened by places like the Moore Institute are vital for my academic morale and intellectual health at a time when the bottom line deflates ambition and thereby imperils scholarship. For myself, the Centre for Irish Studies at Galway, with its academic study of dance and music, and its scholarship in the Irish language, has been a vital and convivial portal into the world of Irish Studies. It is wonderful that Tim Robinson chose NUI Galway as the home for his papers. It was through Nessa Cronin and the Centre for Irish Studies that I met Tim Robinson and I well remember the walk out from Roundstone and after that the tea and chat with himself and Mairéad. So, it was lovely to have the chance to speak about Tim, his work, and the tribute paid to it by Unfolding Irish Landscapes.
Triangulating with Tim Robinson
I take an unworthy pride in accepting Derek Gladwin and Christine Cusick's gift in the Introduction to Unfolding Irish Landscapes: Tim Robinson, Culture and Environment, where they identify 'the main focus of [Robinson's] concerns: Irish historical geography.'[1] I am also chuffed by the compliment to my tribe when Eamonn Wall notes in his essay that: 'In Irish Studies, Geography, more than any of the other disciplines epitomizes the interdisciplinary approach that is supposed to underline scholarship in the field.'[2] Let me take the offering while it is there and use this excellent book to think a little more about Tim Robinson, the geographer.
There are three foci of geographical attentiveness: space, place, and environment. Tim Robinson attends to all three. When we invest a location with meaning, and then share those meanings with neighbours, we make what George Mead called a social object, and in this case the Cartesian location becomes a meaningful Place.[3] If Place is somewhat vertical, then, Space is essentially horizontal, embracing the relations between locations, or rather, for much of human geography, between the making of things and other meanings that happens at various places. Geographers also recognize, and indeed at times have over-emphasised, the ways our activity on Earth has an essentially material basis. Humans must always change the face of the earth the better to meet their inescapable need for food and shelter. Might I venture that humans transform, incompletely and incompetently, indifferent nature into a more or less domesticated environment. From this trinity, we may readily elaborate further concepts such as scale from space, landscape from place, and finitude from environment.
Unfolding Irish Landscapes is generous with its geographical gifts and invites a celebration of Tim Robinson in terms of space, place, and environment, and also of scale, landscape and finitude. Perhaps we should begin by accepting Tim Robinson's claim that the ruling obsession of his work is Space. In the Preface to the essays collected as Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara and Other Writings, Robinson asks that his work be 'read in the light of Space".'[4] I think that space might be not only Robinson's primary scientific object, but it may secrete his principal methodology. When Robinson described Space as his central obsession, it was its scalar character that he relished: '[Space] is, among everything else, the interlocking of all our mental and physical trajectories, good or ill, though all the subspaces of experience up to the cosmic.'[5] Robinson's discussion of the light cone (see Figure 1) illustrates the way scales can be part of one's intellectual ambition.[6] Looking back from a moment, or location, one can comprehend the most cosmic of forces as converging on oneself. Thus, Robinson talks about the spatial structure of Aran as determined by a rectangular geological grain that was given by the transversal forces that ripped open a space for the Atlantic between the rocks that are now Ireland and Newfoundland respectively. This is where John Elder places himself in his piece on 'Catchments', when he hears geological echoes reinforcing musical continuities: 'Right up through such Celtic offspring as bluegrass, there's a keening quality in the music, as melodies break across ancient droning shores.'[7] But, now we are moving too quickly from space to environment, and, indeed, a little beyond my own comfort zone.
Robinson draws upon space for many of his intriguing metaphors. Several of the essays in Unfolding Irish Landscapes, discuss Robinson's making and use of maps. Paddy Duffy talks about the slow landscapes that require to be learned bodily, rather than from the cool postmodern glance at the rearview mirror, once celebrated with too little irony by Jean Baudrillard.[8] Duffy remarks that: 'On bike and foot [Robinson] could engage with the landscape at a pace and in a way which matched the time-space reality of its original makers and shapers, revealing layers of knowledge and imagination laid down in a pedestrian world which have limped on in local memory to the present.'[9] When Robinson himself writes of this perambulation he reaches for another spatial metaphor, and another one from his training in Mathematics. He has described the Peano Curve (see Figure 2) as a sort of algorithm that would ensure if it were followed rigorously that no single point would be traversed more than once, and that every conceivable point could be reached if the curve were indefinitely refined.[10]
In his essay John Elder insists that Robinson 'both perpetuates and enlivens a tradition of Romantic revolt against centralized, mechanized and hierarchical views of humanity and the land.'[11] Nessa Cronin finds in Robinson's early conceptual art, the visual metaphors but also the roots of what we might call the cultural politics of his Irish works. In wanting to move beyond the gallery, Robinson, or Drever as he called himself at the time, challenged the commodification of art but also its elitist seclusion above the routines of the everyday life. He also made art that solicited the spectator to help complete it (see Figure 3).[12] Or, perhaps revise rather than complete it, since a rejection of positivist science was encouraged and sustained by the realization that final knowledge, or finished art was a hopeless ambition. Introducing his second work on Aran, Robinson gave the clue that the 'unsummable totality of human perspectives […] is my real subject.'[13]
The plenitude of the cone of light and the density of the Peano Curve invites an ambition akin to madness. But something a little short of hubris might have its virtues. The wash and backwash of discovery and assimilation even across a small island can never assimilate all that could be known and, as Cronin points out, 'any account could only ever be an interim report.'[14] In an essay on the adequacy of incompleteness, Kelly Sullivan remarks upon the void as the necessary complement to the sign (see Figure 4). We project ourselves into the empty space. We read a presence against an absence. We think for ourselves in the pause between the packets of data. Sullivan concludes that: 'Not knowing allows for possibility and imaginative dwelling; we must end in ignorance because in order to continually press on as scholars and as readers, we need the presence of immensity before us.'[15] Nevertheless, alongside the humility of acknowledging the limits of knowledge, the effort of trying to learn a lot registers a protest against the too little we need to know for our own mining and despoiling of the earth. In his essay on the Gaeltacht Civil Rights Movement, Jerry White has Robinson as a 68-er après la letter. This seems plausible to me and when White reminds us that at the time Robinson was moving to Aran, John Berger was moving into the Haute Savoie, then, we can see a sort of attention to subsistence that castigates both capitalism and the ecological trash-heap it piles up in its invasive destruction. Taking up the perspective of the environment, we must indict ourselves for the too little we care to learn about the too much we choose to ruin. The anti-capitalist and anti-positivist stance of Timothy Drever the conceptual artist found a new imperative in the West of Ireland so that the chaotic ambition of learning as much as possible about one place might serve almost as 'apology […] to the surface of the Earth for the paucity of all our attentions to it.'[16] And so, before even the language work, there can be a time of botanizing, reporting the finds of unusual species and establishing the ecumene of the more common, and of bird spotting; slowing down and finding reasons to look. This patient inspection accepts what Robert MacFarlane writes of as the 'democracy of astonishment,' and enjoys walking as an experience that, as Derek Gladwin remarks, 'commends every accident.'[17]
This is a practice of attentiveness, as if such were a responsibility of any who wish to live a good, an ethical, life. In her essay, Christine Cusick writes of this as the challenge of right living and concludes that it resolves as a challenge to use a place properly. Moya Cannon makes much of this in her essay where she reviews Robinson's maps and writings the better to note the 'quality of attention manifest there–by the combination of precision and resonance, the access to an obvious delight in a wide variety of academic disciplines and yet the ability to draw these disciplines together within a wonderfully poetic and frequently playful discourse.'[18] This is the fulcrum between environment and place. Dún Aonghasa is certainly sublime (Figure 5) and, while, some interpret it as the last desperate stand of a marginalized people, that is not Robinson's suggestion: 'That it is so huge is evidence of the self-confidence and stability of the community that built it, not of their fear of imminent overthrow.'[19] In many ways, this awesome structure troubles him, perhaps because it must have required a great degree of centralization to execute such a work. However, in a choice between imperial orders, the more recent Christian and English versions receives less forgiveness that an earlier Pagan kingdom. But, note here the emphasis upon self-confidence for this indicates a necessary work of repair.
Robinson is ever listening after the stutter of the colonized tongue, and Catherine Marshall describes some of the anticolonial memory recovered in Robinson's work: 'cultural views ignored if not totally destroyed under the colonial regimes of the past.'[20] Gerry Smyth develops an insight from Heidegger about listening as a way of being open to the presence alongside us of other people we respect and suggests that such a perspective is 'highly amenable to the kind of project undertaken by Tim Robinson in relation to the landscapes of the Aran Islands, the Burren and Connemara.'[21] At least from the Elizabethan conquest, much of west of Ireland was under the capitalistic system of landlordism. As rent, all but bare subsistence was extorted from small farmers. The Aran volumes are replete with stories of landlord's agents and the petty monopolies that tyrannized the people and neutered local initiative. As Karen Babine suggests, Robinson implies that right-living on the land might well require that we foreswear property and hold land as a common trust. Babine unfurls from Robinson's work 'the idea that the harder one tries to claim a piece of land the more elusive that ownership becomes.'[22] If, as Babine summarises Robinson's view, a place can serve 'as a repository for stories and ideas,' then, there is a contradiction between the continuity of meaning and the short-term utilitarianism of the profit calculus. Robinson's attention to the heroic struggle of the Land League and the respite from landlordism that came from the Congested Districts Board draws out one of those many filaments that can be knotted with another thread within the cone of distant causes, for, here again the political context set out by Jerry White is useful, this time with respect to the Gaeltacht Civil Rights Movement and how it helped people think differently about the worth of the society and culture of the West of Ireland. Language is crucial here.
These small fields, 'farming on the tiny scale permitted by Aran's vexatious topography,' are one way of living with a land that has been denuded of any woods it once had, and of the soil that might once have anchored those woods.[23] With small fields, the cows can be systematically and intensively grazed upon the very fine grass that springs from the soil made in the clints and grykes of the limestone rocks. And new soil can be made with sand and seaweed on the land once cleared of the stones that then can be piled up in walls to shelter crops or animals. Short of wood, farmers are even inclined to pull down parts of walls to let animals through, reassembling the wall after the passage of beasts. The lacework of small fields is also a trace of 'the fossilized land-hunger of the "Congested Districts", of the Land War, of the Great Famine and above all of the century of population growth that preceded it.'[24] But amid this difficulty, in these fields, and from these cliffs people developed a way of living that was rich in poetry, story, and a way of being on Earth, in the company of other animals, birds and fish that might yet have much to teach us. After all, our own way of being on the Earth has brought us into an Anthropocene we are incapable of mastering. Perhaps we could learn a little more respect.
So much is already gone. The second of Robinson's Aran books, strikes an elegiac tone:
As with the fields and paths, so with the language; there are ominous signs of disuse and decay. Irish, the irreplaceable distillate of over two thousand years' experience of this country, which has been poured down the drain in the rest of Ireland but which was carried unspilt even thru the famine century in those four little cups, the western Gaeltachtaí of Aran, Connemara and parts of Donegal and Kerry, is now evaporating even here.[25]
And this is why it was back to the fields and the cliffs and the rocks and the paths (see Figure 6). Equipped with what at the time was only a very limited command of the Irish language, Robinson started to collect placenames. He took up what he was best able to do and so began what Robert MacFarlane in his Foreword calls a 'reformation of values.'[26] As Duffy shows in his essay, the restoration of hundreds of placenames would in itself be a significant contribution to the people of the West of Ireland. One of Robinson's informants on Aran told him that he was doing 'good work, […] something well worth doing for the island.'[27] But Robinson does so much more. The story that is lured with the placename, the genealogical and documentary research that comes when people open their closets for their respectful and curious visitor, and the critical review of expert knowledges solicited by letter or filtered out of his personal library, these are all further gifts from the pen and the practice of Tim Robinson.
If an environmental ethic draws him to placelore, the realization that placelore is itself a resource for right-living, makes urgent the work of four decades. In one extended reflection upon a place named in conjunction with a folktale about cow that dies of shame when its endless gift is mocked by the trickery of a disrespectful person, Robinson asks us to reflect upon the earth-wisdom in such a story: 'an image of the nurturing Earth itself, in its vulnerability to abuse and insult.'[28] Without the placename, the story would surely have been lost. Robinson holds out the earthly wonders of Aran, the Burren and Connemara for our approval and he throws down this Jeremiad: '[I]f we cannot save such a place as the Burren from spoilation, there is nowhere safe on the surface of the earth.'[29]
And so, with Unfolding Irish Landscapes: Tim Robinson, Culture and Environment, we have at last a walk around almost the full measure of this remarkable artist. This collection will surely bring further critical and academic attention to the work of Tim Robinson. Many more people will get the chance to learn a new attentiveness to the earthly wonders of the West of Ireland. But the book does not close itself off and to illustrate this let me finish with one last geographical trope.
Triangulation is an important spatial metaphor for Tim Robinson (Figure 7). In Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, the narrator can locate himself in his childhood landscape by reference to two different church towers, which in turn place Proust with respect to two different afternoon walks. The landscape is invested with meaning by the associations of the churches with elements of the historical sociology of France. The two different walks have significance for the likelihood of the evening ending with sufficient time for Marcel's mother to come to his room and kiss him goodnight. In later life so many things are mapped onto the difference between utilitarian efficiency and romantic difficulty and the contrast serves as a structural matrix for Proust:
Since my father used always to speak of the 'Méséglise way' as comprising the finest view of a plain that he knew anywhere, and of the 'Guermantes way' as typical of river scenery, I had invested each of them, by conceiving them in this way as two distinct entities, with that cohesion, that unity which belong only to the figments of the mind; the smallest detail of either of them seemed to me a precious thing exemplifying the special excellence of the whole […]. I set between them […] the distance that there was between the two parts of my brain in which used to think of them, one of the distances of the mind which not only keep things apart, but cut them off from one another and put them on different planes.[30]
In various places, Tim Robinson enjoys the emotional triangulation of Proust's novel but he suggests he might make a shift from triangulating around Time past, towards a triangulation of Space present.[31] He uses something like this image to talk about the relations between Synge, the islanders and the island ('a painful contradiction between the necessity and the impossibility of each of three identifications constituting wholeness, between the visitor, the islanders and the island itself'); between himself, the map, and the mapped landscape ([i]n the basic geographic act of mapping I find three conjunctions: that of the place mapped with the one who maps it; that of the mapper with the map itself; and finally that of the map with the mapped').[32] In each case, there is one term that is less securely known and it is from the base points that it is espied. In these two cases, the islanders for Synge and the landscape for Robinson are the terms that are reached after, or taken sight of.
But now, Unfolding Irish Landscapes offers the prospect of new appreciations of Robinson's work from the various different perspectives elaborated in the essays. This sort of intellectual triangulation is explicit in many of the essays. When Gerry Smyth stands with Heidegger to look at Robinson he can then triangulate towards the new knowledge of the theme of listening in Robinson's work. When Moynagh Sullivan sets down Bracha Ettinger as another base point alongside a reading of Tim Robinson, then, we can think about something new, a third point. In this case, we can note the tension in Robinson's work between the organic and the inorganic. Robinson says that, by virtue of its rectangular geology, Aran naturally gives itself to us in geometry (Figure 8). At certain points he suggests that organic circles put upon the landscape are 'egocentric stances.'[33] He seemed delighted to find that one such circle 'did not withstand the criticism of the autumn storms, […] every bit of it had been tidied back into the storm beach again.'[34] Robinson himself notes the tension between geometry and ecology in his work: 'it is rather peculiar that my contribution to those environmental exhibitions was very geometrical, very mathematical.'[35] Sullivan's essay gives us an opportunity to rethink the organic in Robinson's work and to think a bit more about the singularity that is felt as a dependency; a connection to the earth that is both a matter of finitude but also a matter of vital possibility. Ettinger distinguished a matrixial gaze, which acknowledges our essential and pre-subjective ties to our mother, from a phallic principle that is about autonomy and separation.[36] Sullivan concludes that 'Robinson's writing, artwork and walking practice […] brings into the symbolic the lines of consciousness that striate the matrixial stratum as elaborated by Ettinger.'[37] And so it will be, this wonderful collection will project new sightings of important themes and we will establish our base points with Gladwin and Cusick, to unfold new prospects for our studies of Tim Robinson and the societies of the West of Ireland for whom he has cultivated such respect.
Gerry Kearns, 12 April 2016
[1] Derek Gladwin and Christine Cusick, 'Introduction: Ireland's "ABC of earth wonders,"' in Gladwin and Cusick (eds), Unfolding Irish Landscapes: Tim Robinson, Culture and Environment (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016) 1-18, 13.
[2] Eamonn Wall, '"But his study is out of doors': Tim Robinson's place in Irish Studies,' in Gladwin and Cusick, Unfolding Irish Landscapes,147-157, 150.
[3] George Herbert Mead, 'What Social Objects Must Psychology Presuppose?,' Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 7 (1910) 174-180.
[4] Tim Robinson, Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara and Other Writings (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1996) vi.
[5] Robinson, Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara, vi.
[6] Robinson, The view from the horizon (Roundstone: Coracle, 1997) 15
[7] John Elder, 'Catchments,' in Gladwin and Cusick, Unfolding Irish Landscapes, 41-52, 50.
[8] Jean Baudrillard, America, trans. Chris Turner (London: Verso, 1988 [1986]) 1.
[9] Patrick Duffy, 'Genius loci: the geographical imagination of Tim Robinson,' in Gladwin and Cusick, Unfolding Irish Landscapes, 21-40, 37.
[10] Robinson, Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara, 87.
[11] Elder, 'Catchments,' 42.
[12] Jos Smith, 'Anticipating Deep Mapping: tracing the spatial practice of Tim Robinson,' Humanities 4 :3 (2015) 283-303.
[13] Robinson, Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990 [1986]) 3.
[14] Nessa Cronin, '"The fineness of things": the deep mapping projects of Tim Robinson's art and writings, 1969-72,' in Gladwin and Cusick, Unfolding Irish Landscapes, 53-72, 65.
[15] Kelly Sullivan, 'Not knowing as aesthetic imperative in Tim Robinson's "Stones of Aran,"' in Gladwin and Cusick, Unfolding Irish Landscapes, 103-118, 116.
[16] Robinson, Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara, 91.
[17] Robert Macfarlane, 'Foreword: Tim Robinson,' in Gladwin and Cusick, Unfolding Irish Landscapes, xvi-xxi, xx.
[18] Moya Cannon, 'Thirteen ways of looking at a landscape: the poetic in the work of Tim Robinson,' in Gladwin and Cusick, Unfolding Irish Landscapes, 119-126, 119; Derek Gladwin, 'Documentary map-making and film-making in Pat Collins's "Tim Robinson: Connemara,"' in Gladwin and Cusick, Unfolding Irish Landscapes, 73-86, 81.
[19] Robinson, Pilgrimage, 81.
[20] Catherine Marshall, '"Another half-humanized boulder lying on unprofitable ground": the visual art of Tim Robinson/Timothy Drever,' in Gladwin and Cusick, Unfolding Irish Landscapes, 190-201, 192.
[21] Gerry Smyth, '"About nothing, about everything": listening in/to Tim Robinson,' in Gladwin and Cusick, Unfolding Irish Landscapes, 173-189, 176.
[22] Karen Babine, 'Tim Robinson and Chris Arthur: in defence of the Irish essay,' in Gladwin and Cusick, Unfolding Irish Landscapes, 127-143, 133.
[23] Robinson, Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara, 110.
[24] Robinson, Labyrinth, 15.
[25] Robinson, Pilgrimage, 7.
[26] Macfarlane, 'Foreword,' xix.
[27] Robinson, Pilgrimage, 303.
[28] Robinson, Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara, 161.
[29] Robinson, Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara, 52.
[30] Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time. I. Swann's Way, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D. J. Enright (London: Chatto and Windus, 1992 [1913]) 161.
[31] Robinson, Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara, 104.
[32] Robinson, Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara, 143, 15.
[33] Tim Robinson, Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1990 [Lilliput 1986]) 61.
[34] Robinson, Pilgrimage, 32.
[35] Jos Smith, 'A Step Towards the Earth: Interview with Tim Robinson,' Politics of Place 1 (2013) 4-11, 4
[36] Bracha Ettinger, The Matrixial Borderspace (Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).
[37] Moynagh Sullivan, '"An ear to the earth': matrixial gazing in Tim Robinson's walk-art-text practice,' in Gladwin and Cusick, Unfolding Irish Landscapes, 202-217, 203.


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Rumor has it Carine Roitfeld might be adding another job—stylist at Balenciaga—to her (many) current titles. {Fashionista}
Rachel Zoe is also taking on new roles, landing the position of chief stylist at online footwear retailer ShoeDazzle. {WWD}
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Start your Google shopping: Target just announced that it will match any competitor's price, both in stores and online. {Racked}
Hermès features model Iselin Steiro on wheels for its Spring 2013 campaign. {FashionCopiuos}
Spanish house Loewe also unveiled the first Spring 2013 campaign shots featuring the always-stunning Penélope Cruz in images inspired by Salvador Dali's wife and muse, Gala Dali. {Telegraph}
Adriano Goldschmied collaborated with J.Crew on an exclusive denim collection that includes two jean styles and a skirt ($198-$288), available on January 28. {WWD}
Ralph Lauren is shutting down its Rugby store on Bleecker Street in NYC, which follows the announcement back in November that it's pulling the plug on the collegiate label. {Racked}
Angela Missoni released a statement regarding her missing family. "We are all moved by the affection and help that we have had from the whole world and thankful to the authorities for their tireless search and rescue efforts," she said. "At this time, we have no further specifics regarding the search except to say we are confident they will continue at the same pace and the search will explore all possibilities. Our deepest thanks go to the multitude of supporters that have reached out to us from all over the world." {Grazia Daily}
Reed Krakoff has tapped French beauty Laetitia Casta for his Spring 2013 campaign. The former Yves Saint Laurent-muse was photographed by Krakoff himself in New York. {WWD}
Stella McCartney is adding an optical eyewear line to her brand portfolio. The complete eco-friendly collection will be unveiled in March and will feature five styles in burgundy, taupe, black, teal, and tortoise. {Stella McCartney press release}
Watch Meghan Collison play dress-up in a new video promoting Miss Wu, Jason Wu's collection for Nordstrom. {Nordstrom}


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The Bully Pulpit
This dual biography of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft offers fresh proof of Doris Kearns Goodwin's ability to 'bring dead presidents back to life.'
Archie Butt served Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft and died on the Titanic in 1912. Now his story, and many others from the fascinating Progressive Era (which echoes our own times, in many ways), surface anew in The Bully Pulpit, Doris Kearns Goodwin's well-crafted look at the presidents and journalists who ushered in a brief but significant era of reform.
Before his death, Butt watched with sadness and anxiety as Roosevelt and Taft lost faith and trust in each other. The rift between the longtime political allies weakened the progressive wing of the Republican Party and ushered Woodrow Wilson into the White House in 1912.
"They are now apart and how they will keep from wrecking the country between them I scarcely see," Butt said as the two men drifted from allies to enemies – and, soon enough, presidential rivalry. Roosevelt's decision to run as a third-party candidate against Taft, his self-appointed successor, handed the presidency to Wilson.
Their parting and former partnership, along with the role played by muckraking journalists at McClure's magazine, occupy center stage in Goodwin's latest presidential biography. As fellow historian Sean Wilentz told the Associated Press in a recent interview, Goodwin has a knack for finding fresh angles to bring her beloved dead presidents back to life.
Her 1995 Pulitzer prize-winning book, "No Ordinary Time," examined the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt through the lens of his relationship with his wife, Eleanor, and others in his inner circle.
Then came an unexpected obstacle, followed by a triumphant return. Not for FDR, but for Goodwin herself.
Questions raised in 2002 and 2003 about "borrowed material" in two of her books left Goodwin on the defensive regarding the use of passages from other works in what Bo Crader of The Weekly Standard and Slate's Timothy Noah made clear was more than a one-time, inadvertent mistake. Much of the furor focused on Goodwin's 1987 best-seller "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys."
In addition, while she credited earlier works in "No Ordinary Time," Noah demonstrated, with authority, the lack of quotation marks for extensive passages in the book nearly identical to the referenced sources. In other words, Goodwin had plagiarized.
All of which made her highly scrutinized return in 2005 all the more remarkable. "Team of Rivals," Goodwin's account of President Lincoln and his fractious cabinet, not only put a fresh spin on assessing the most-analyzed president in American history, but was judged to be both rigorous and accurate.
"Team of Rivals" enjoyed an extended run that benefited from rave reviews, an endorsement by a young Illinois senator embarking on a long-shot presidential bid in 2007 (you may now know him simply as 44), and finally, last year, the Steven Spielberg movie "Lincoln." Day-Lewis went on to win an Oscar for his portrayal of the 16th president.
Now comes "The Bully Pulpit," a dual biography of the familiar 26th president (Roosevelt) and the unremarkable 27th (Taft). Goodwin, a familiar face and voice on historical and contemporary politics, has joked in interviews that few Americans know Taft for much more than his 350-pound girth and his custom-made tub at the White House.
Taft loved the law and the courts but fell into politics through his own good character and the constant prodding of his ambitious wife. He and Roosevelt started their friendship in Washington in 1890. Benjamin Harrison named Taft solicitor general soon after appointing TR to the Civil Service Commission. Taft and Roosevelt were neighbors and shared political sensibilities.
Goodwin shows the decency in Taft, particularly during his years as governor general in the Philippines and as a lawyer and judge. Taft became chief justice of the United States in 1921, fulfilling his life's ambition. No one else has ever been both president and a Supreme Court justice before or since.
To be sure, Roosevelt's biography is well-told, too. Goodwin hits the high notes in the life of an asthmatic boy who develops into a vigorous outdoorsman, military man, rancher, intellectual, and, of course, a beloved, masterful politician still regarded as one of the greatest in American history. The restlessness and determination of Roosevelt resonate here, from San Juan Hill to speaking softly and carrying a big stick.
Goodwin quotes TR on his own prodigious reading appetites, just one of many examples of Roosevelt's relentless enthusiasm for so many things in life. "It is surprising how much reading a man can do in time usually wasted," he said.
And she is wise to balance the stories of Roosevelt and Taft with those of the muckraking journalists led by magazine publisher Sam McClure. Goodwin resurrects the tireless reporters and writers Ida Tarbell, William Allen White, Lincoln Steffens and Ray Stannard Baker, telling of their unlikely rise to prominence and reminding us of how different the media was at the time. Lengthy stories on government policy and influence made the rounds in middle-class America, exciting an audience that swelled as McClure's grew increasingly influential.
Roosevelt, himself a writer, had thicker skin than many politicos but also understood the value of the Fourth Estate. It was TR, after all, who coined the term "bully pulpit." In circumstances when he shared the sentiment of the muckrakers, he provided extensive access to allow reporters to unearth cronyism in business and politics.
This stands in marked contrast to recent presidents. Both the Bush 43 and Obama administrations have come under scrutiny and criticism for prosecuting whistleblowers, withholding access to the president and other top advisers, monitoring calls and e-mails of some reporters, and creating an overall chilling effect on reporters' attempts to delve into how and what the government does.
Tarbell and her colleagues faced the wrath of Rockefeller and Republican conservatives but benefited from the aid of Roosevelt and other progressives. Roosevelt opened the first White House media room for reporters and made access a part of his routine. Known as the "barber hour," Goodwin shares newspaperman Louis Brownlow's account of the frequent question-and-answer sessions conducted while Roosevelt underwent an early-afternoon shave.
"A more skillful barber never existed," Brownlow reported. TR "would wave both arms, jump up, speak excitedly, and then drop again into the chair and grin at the barber, who would begin all over."
The muckrakers emerge in these pages as heroic in their own right, working with Roosevelt and other progressives to shed light on monopolistic trusts embodied by John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil, the lack of regulation for food and other industries, the misdeeds of some labor leaders, and the value of conservation and income equality.
McClure, like Roosevelt, knew the money and influence in Washington (sound familiar?) could only be overcome by popular outrage.
"There is no one left," McClure wrote in 1903, "none but all of us."
Goodwin spent eight years working on "The Bully Pulpit" and the effort shows, much to the reader's benefit and delight. She keeps the story clipping along, chooses enlightening anecdotes (how many Americans knew that Tarbell, who exposed Rockefeller's ruthless practices in McClure's, was herself a victim since Rockefeller ruined her oilman father's business?), and has the narrative and historical acumen to weave her theme through 900 pages. At 70, let's hope she has at least a couple more biographies in mind, much as her peers David McCullough and Robert Caro, to name two examples, have continued to produce top-shelf work long after qualifying for AARP membership.
For now, savor "The Bully Pulpit." It is a command performance of popular history. Now it's up to Spielberg, whose DreamWorks has already optioned "The Bully Pulpit" for a movie unlikely to star Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis, to see whether he can match Goodwin's fine history with a movie of the same quality. In this instance, no one wants to be a trust-buster.
Erik Spanberg is a Monitor contributor.


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Colorado is full of artists working with every type of media you can imagine.
There are artists who create jewelry out of polished gems and twisted metal, and there are those who transform blank canvases into images that eloquently capture Colorado's pristine natural beauty. Poets, musicians, photographers, videographers, metalsmiths, painters, sculptors and carpenters also live and thrive in Colorado's vibrant art scene.
The hurdle they sometimes face, though, is connecting with enthusiastic patrons.
The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and Denver Botanic Gardens hope they have created a plan that will ease that difficulty in 2013.
Simply put, the goal is to connect local artists with local art buyers.
The two groups have developed CSArt Colorado, closely following the successful Community Supported Agricultural farm share programs that connect local growers with local consumers and, in doing so, have garnered much attention in the local agricultural and restaurant scenes in recent years.
Community Supported Art Colorado, the program's full name, also is modeled after a concept initially developed by the St. Paul, Minn.-based organization Springboard for the Arts.
Under CSArt Colorado, 18 artists who create a variety of media will be accepted to participate in this year's inaugural program. Over the course of 2013, those 18 artists will each create 59 works of art that eventually will end up in the hands of shareholders who have purchased a $400 share of the program.
One hundred shares, divided into two groups (The Enthusiast I and The Enthusiast II) are available for purchase. Each shareholder will end up with nine pieces of art after they select three at each of three distribution events, which are planned for spring, summer and fall. Each artist selected to participate in the program will receive a $1,000 honorarium, as well as a share and, thus, three pieces of art. All told, the 18 artists will have created 1,062 works.
"The artwork will be on display at the distribution events," said Jordan Robbins, BMoCA's director of advancement. "One of the distribution events will be at BMoCA, one at the Denver Botanic Gardens and we're kind of exploring doing the third one at a restaurant — probably a farm-to-table-focus restaurant."
Each artist's work will be exhibited at only one of the distribution events.
Artists who are interested in participating in the program should contact BMoCA or visit the CSArt Colorado website (http://csartcolorado.org) to complete an application. All submissions are due by Jan. 13.
Valerie Amend, digital communications manager at BMoCA, is looking forward to the impact that CSArt will have on the local art scene.
"The program supports artists by offering them a chance to create work," she said, "but we're also really trying to connect them with collectors and just really add to the developing art scene in Colorado."
To learn more about purchasing a share or completing an artist application, visit http://csartcolorado.org