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American Sweetheart
Fierce, cocky, and built for stardom, Marlen Esparza prepares to fight for the gold at this summer's Olympic debut of women's boxing.
One evening in mid-February, Marlen Esparza and her coach, Rudy Silva, arrived at the Northern Quest Resort and Casino in Airway Heights, a small suburb west of Spokane, Washington, and walked to an empty pavilion just past the slot machines. As they crossed the casino's kaleidoscopic carpeting, projector spotlights danced at their feet, wielded by lighting technicians trying out angles. A vacuum cleaner hummed among rows of chairs surrounding an elevated boxing ring where, in about an hour, Esparza would fight in the semifinals of the women's Olympic boxing trials.
Unlike most of the other boxers participating in the trials, Esparza, who is from Houston, had declined the accommodations arranged for her by USA Boxing at the casino resort, and had chosen to stay at another hotel at her own expense. Esparza prepares for her matches psychologically as much as she does physically, and this means maintaining distance from her opponents before fights. "If we stay in the same place, that makes me feel like we're equal, and I don't want to feel equal," Esparza told me. "I want to feel superior."
This feeling, she has made evident to her opponents. "She once said I hit like a 12-year-old girl," said Alex Love, a 23-year-old boxer from Monroe, Washington, whom Esparza has fought and beaten three times. Esparza's confidence is not unfounded. At 22 years old, she is the six-time consecutive national flyweight champion. "She has a lot of experience, which she talks about a lot," said Love, who has been fighting for only three years. "But I have nothing but respect for her—granted, I lost to her, so I have to have nothing but respect."
After beating Love 22–12 earlier in the week, Esparza was preparing for her bout against Christina Cruz, a boxer from New York City. Esparza once told CNN that Cruz "boxes as a hobby. I box as a lifestyle."
Words that may seem unkind to her competitors are, to Esparza, basic strategy. To beat her opponents in the ring, she must first convince them—and, more important, herself—that they can't beat her. As a boxer, this is one of Esparza's great strengths. "She doesn't think she can be beat," says David Avila, a women's-boxing columnist for The Ring magazine. "The good ones are like that. If you start having doubts, it will show, and the other boxers will run you over."
Backstage, Esparza had to forfeit her territorial advantage. A small area sectioned off with long black curtains gave her visual, but not audial, privacy from Cruz, who was warming up just feet away. That was one reason for the silence between boxer and trainer as Esparza unpacked her gym bag and Silva unspooled a roll of white tape to wrap her hands and wrists. Another was that this would be the most important fight of Esparza's career yet. A loss would eliminate her chances to compete in the Olympic debut of women's boxing in London this summer. A third was that Cruz has proved to be Esparza's toughest opponent to date. Esparza had fought 63 fights in the United States and lost only two of them: one was when she was 12 years old; the other was to Cruz, last year.
Beginning her warm-up, Esparza rolled her head a few times and hopped up and down, alternating feet. Silva, a Houston police officer with deep-set, serious eyes, pulled her arms behind her back, stretching them one at a time. As Esparza started to shadowbox, she threw varying combinations of jabs and hooks and quickly pivoted her feet across the black floor, angling out and ducking from her invisible opponent. The effect was like watching a rubber ball with fists bounce in taunting circles. Silva, dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, stood with his arms folded across his chest, studying her footwork.
Esparza's uniform was a pair of long red shorts and a loose red tank top with white trim. Her shoulder-length brown hair, which, when she's not fighting, Esparza prefers to wear down—she thinks it makes her look prettier—was in cornrows to prevent it from coming loose under her helmet. As an extra measure, she had tied an American-flag bandana around the braids.
Esparza is five feet three inches tall. Her large brown eyes, high cheekbones, and tan complexion make her look more like a TV anchorwoman than someone who gets hit in the face a lot. (In addition to being sponsored by Nike and Coca-Cola, she is the first American amateur boxer to have signed with CoverGirl.) Esparza, who has always tried to avoid what she calls "the boxer body," has a figure that is more feminine, less bulky, than the rippling musculature of her peers. But recently, she has become self-conscious about her back, which grew wide when she put on six pounds to meet the minimum Olympic weight class of 112.
Before arriving at the casino, Esparza had taken a nap, as she always does before a fight. To wake up, she takes a lukewarm shower; hot water, she has learned, can have a dehydrating effect. Just before she gets out, she turns the dial all the way to cold and shadowboxes for 10 seconds.
Outside the ring, Esparza is unfailingly cheerful. She smiles a lot, showing a neat row of square white teeth. Her voice, which is nasal and somewhat childlike, has a cartoonish pitch mixed with a Texan drawl. But before a bout, she goes quiet and asks that no one speak to her. When Gloria Peek, a coach with USA Boxing, passed her backstage, she gave Esparza's arm a light tap and kept walking. "Marlen is very intense," Peek told me. "She puts a lot of pressure on herself."
The only person Esparza will talk to right before a fight is Silva. "Man, my heart is like ta-da-da-da-da-da," she said to him at one point, tapping her fingers against her chest. "Like one of them machines they used to use to send messages."
The headphone dangling from her left ear was playing Christian hymns. She used to listen to Drake and Eminem, but she found that rap music riled her up too much before a fight. When she gets in the ring, she wants to be calm—to think about each punch, and never just throw it.
Esparza picked out a pair of red boxing gloves and Silva laced them along her wrists. As he began to guide her punches with a couple of hand pads, her movements grew more assertive, her responses faster, and each connecting blow was accompanied by a cry that came out sounding like an angry "Ha!"
Out in the audience were Esparza's father, David, and her pastor, Johnny Brady, who had flown in from Houston to watch the fight. Ten minutes before the bell, Esparza turned to Silva. "We're going to go pray," she said.
The bout in which Esparza lost to Cruz, last year, was never supposed to happen. In accordance with a new rule instituted by USA Boxing at the end of 2010, Esparza, as the winner of that year's national flyweight championship, had automatically secured a spot in a U.S. qualifier for the 2011 Pan American Games. But a group of other boxers, including Cruz, contested the selection procedures. As a result, a box-off between Cruz and Esparza was scheduled for March 2011 in Colorado Springs.
Cruz is a defensive fighter. She runs the ring and hits accurately but infrequently. Knowing this, Esparza planned to stay on top of her and fire nonstop punches. But Cruz, who is two inches taller, dodged Esparza's blows and countered with a precise right hook. Cruz won 10–7, dealing Esparza her first loss in nine years.
"It sounds mean, but for some of the other girls, they're used to losing," Silva told me. "But for Marlen, she took it real hard."
Back in Houston, Silva doubled Esparza's workout routine. But her confidence, her unwavering belief that she would always win, was bruised. She sought help from a sports psychiatrist, who thought she was under too much pressure and prescribed Paxil, an antidepressant. (She declined the prescription.) Around the same time, Esparza, who grew up Catholic, began attending Brady's nondenominational church with more regularity.
A few months later, at the USA Boxing 2011 National Championships, Esparza faced Cruz again. This time, Esparza won, 9–3, ultimately securing her spot in the Olympic trials and maintaining her national title. Still, for Esparza, entering the ring with Cruz is a bit like peering over a ski slope where she's taken a particularly ugly fall. She knows that she has beaten Cruz before and that she can beat her again, but still, her self-doubt lingers—and that, more than the sight of Cruz, frightens her. Before Esparza climbed into the ring in Spokane, her pastor, Brady, said a prayer for her: "Be with her, Lord, as You were with David when he beat Goliath."
One reason that Esparza's opponents were able to successfully challenge USA Boxing's policies is that amateur women's boxing is a relatively young sport with still-developing guidelines. Historians believe that women have been participating in professional boxing in the U.S. since at least 1876, when The New York Times ran an article about a winner of a women's boxing match who collected $200 and a silver butter dish as her prize. Yet women were barred from competing in amateur boxing—also known as Olympic-style boxing—as recently as 20 years ago.
Amateur boxing, for both men and women, differs from professional boxing in scoring and style. Unlike the televised pro prizefights, in which boxers pound each other in search of a knockout punch, amateur fighters win on the basis of a strict point system, relying on clean blows to the head or body during four two-minute rounds for women and three three-minute rounds for men. They wear helmets. The strength behind a single punch is less important than precision and speed in the ring; the resulting matches are less sensational and more focused on technique.
Women's professional bouts have been televised since the 1950s, leading to the rise of "the Daughters"—Laila Ali (daughter of Muhammad), J'Marie Moore (Archie), Freeda Foreman (George), and Jacqui Frazier-Lyde (Joe)—in the '90s and early 2000s. But because women's amateur fights are almost never broadcast on TV, the boxers (and the sport) have so far gained little national recognition. Women were not allowed to fight in amateur competitions until 1993, when a 16-year-old named Dallas Malloy sued U.S. Amateur Boxing, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, after learning that she could train but not compete.
"I got asked 'Why would a pretty girl like you want to box?,'" Malloy, now 35, recalled when I reached her at her home, in Los Angeles. "I think one time I said, 'If I was ugly, would it be okay?'"
Malloy won her suit, and that fall, in October 1993, she beat Heather Poyner in the first amateur women's boxing match. (She left the sport soon after to pursue an acting career, appearing as herself in Jerry Maguire and as a vampire from Dallas on HBO's True Blood.)
The reasons for barring women from the sport were not entirely clear. Some officials worried they wouldn't have enough participants to stage national competitions. Others claimed health concerns. As women began to compete, in the mid-'90s, USA Boxing required that they wear breast protectors, based on the fear—and lacking the medical research to suggest otherwise—that getting hit in the chest could cause breast cancer or the inability to breast-feed. The gladiator-style plastic shields were to be inserted beneath a sports bra or tank top. Some were rigidly molded, with an individual cup for each breast.
"I don't know who they expected to fill these," says Christy Halbert, a former boxer and the chair of USA Boxing's women's task force. "Athletic women tend to have much less body fat, so they don't usually have large breasts, but these always had very ample bosoms."
The contraptions proved more harmful than protective, bruising and lacerating the boxers as they struggled to throw punches with cumbersome disks strapped to their chests. "As a boxer, you keep your elbows in—that's your defense," Malloy told me. "It completely hindered that."
After many women refused to wear the protectors, USA Boxing eventually made them optional. A 2009 medical report published by the International Boxing Association found not only that breast cancer was not a risk of the sport, but that women's boxing was in fact safer than men's, because of female athletes' flexible necks and lesser musculature.
Concern about low participation also turned out to be unfounded. Between 1995 and 2005, USA Boxing's female membership more than tripled, from 730 to 2,400 boxers. Three years ago, when the International Olympic Committee's executive board voted to include women's boxing in the 2012 Games, it was the only new event added to the summer program. (Baseball, karate, roller sports, softball, and squash were rejected for both sexes.) This summer will mark not only the sport's Olympic debut, but also its introduction to American viewers, most of whom will be watching amateur women's boxing for the first time.
Though men will have 10 Olympic titles to compete for, women have been allotted only three: flyweight, at 106 to 112 pounds; lightweight, at 123 to 132 pounds; and middleweight, at 152 to 165 pounds. For those old enough to remember the breast protectors, a particularly sore subject is the International Boxing Association's suggestion that female boxers wear skirts in the ring so that spectators can distinguish them from the men. Though a recent vote has ruled the skirts optional, many boxers still feel pressured to wear them.
"It's like saying 'It's optional, but we want you to do this,'" Esparza told me, and then joked, "I'm going to ask them if I can do it shorter. You want a skirt? I'll give you a skirt."
On the morning of Esparza's bout against Cruz in Airway Heights, the boxers who would be fighting that evening gathered in a small, carpeted room off the hotel lobby to be weighed. The sun had barely risen, and most of the women sat around the waiting area in sweats, socks, and athletic sandals, rubbing their eyes. Esparza arrived with Silva. Dressed in black sweatpants, a white hoodie, and a red beanie pulled low over her eyebrows, she took a seat a few rows behind Cruz, next to the lightweight fighter Queen Underwood.
Esparza doesn't have many friends among the other boxers, but Underwood is one of them. Like Esparza, she has been the national champion in her weight class for several consecutive years, and the two tend to keep to themselves. "I don't think a lot of the other girls are too friendly on us, because they want to beat us," Underwood told me. "So we stick tight." Among her competitors, Esparza has a reputation for being a bit arrogant. This is due, in part, to her teasing of them in the press, and also to her many high-profile endorsements and the disproportionate amount of media attention she receives. (She is the only amateur female boxer known to employ a publicist.)
When Cruz and Esparza were called up together for their physicals, they stood inches apart, actively avoiding eye contact. Next to Esparza, Cruz, who is 29 and works as a secretary, looks awkward, almost mousy. She has long, straight hair that hangs over her sinewy frame, and she speaks in short, wary sentences. Her trainer, Marcos Suarez, who is said to also be her boyfriend, hadn't accompanied her to the trials. Every time I saw Cruz, she was by herself.
Many female boxers have troubled backgrounds. Underwood has spoken publicly about being sexually abused by her father; Tyrieshia Douglas, a fighter in Esparza's weight class, told me that she grew up in more foster homes than she's able to count; Cruz, whose mother was in prison for most of Cruz's childhood, was raised by her grandparents. Though Esparza's parents are divorced, her upbringing was relatively stable, which she thinks may explain why some members of the press have favored her underdog opponents.
"So I have to feel guilty because I came from a good home? Or I have to feel guilty because my parents aren't drug addicts?" she says. "I guess I'm in a poor-person sport. Not like I'm rich or anything, but if I was in gymnastics or, like, tennis, no one would think it was weird that I had a lot of support."
Esparza grew up in a single-story white-brick house across the street from a vast, marshy bayou in Houston's Harris County, an industrial area dotted with pawnshops and used-car lots. Her father, David, immigrated from Ciudad Juárez as a teenager, and works as a supervisor at a local welding plant; her mother, Carmen, who was born in El Paso, is an assistant at a dental office.
David is a devout boxing fan. The way some families watch football, the Esparzas—Marlen is the third of four children—would gather around the TV in the living room to watch VHS tapes of the Mexican professional boxer Julio César Chávez. David encouraged his sons, Diego and David Jr., to take up the sport, but resisted when Marlen showed interest. "I'm a Mexican guy," David told me. "I like the sport, I just never thought it was for women." But when there was no one else to accompany David Jr., his youngest, to the gym one day and Marlen volunteered, David gave in.
Growing up, Esparza was the most outgoing of her siblings, pulling pranks—a recurring one involved painting her father's toenails while he slept—and telling jokes at the dinner table. "I always told her she could be an entertainer," Carmen says. But after she was picked on in grade school for being chubby, her clowning turned into an attention-seeking bad attitude. "I lost weight and turned really mean," Esparza says. "I had a lot of problems with girls, especially." In seventh grade, she shoved a classmate's head into a chalkboard and was transferred to an alternative school. That year was when Esparza, 12, walked into Rudy Silva's gym.
Silva, who was in his late 20s and training to be a cop, had just opened a space in the nearby area of Pasadena, where he trained some of the local kids. On her first day, Esparza joined the beginners. "Man, this is lame," Esparza remembers thinking. "I thought I would be boxing." Nearby, Silva was leaning on the edge of a ring, observing some of the older boys spar. Esparza marched up to him and asked to train in his group. "He looked at me like I was a dog or something," she says.
In February, I visited Silva at Jefferson Davis High School, where he is assigned by the Houston Police Department. On the wall of Principal Jaime Castañeda's office, where Silva met me, autographed photos of Esparza climb all the way to the ceiling. "I'm not a boxing fan," Castañeda told me. "I'm a Rudy-and-Marlen fan."
At 38, Silva, who boxed as a teenager, is fit and good-looking, with the unemotional demeanor that typically accompanies both his professions. But when asked about the day he met Esparza, his features soften as he tries not to smile. "I said 'No, no, no, no,'" he recalled. "'I don't train females.'" As Silva remembers it, Esparza asked him again the next day and again he said no; but he kept an eye on her. Esparza—"just this feisty, tiny thing," he said—was clumsily pummeling every bag. When she returned a third time, Silva agreed to show her a few things. "But I'm not going to train you like a girl," he told her.
At first Silva wanted to make her quit, so he put Esparza in the ring with the older boys and assigned the group impossible drills. In about a week, the boys started quitting, but Esparza remained. That year, he trained her for a local Golden Gloves tournament; she won. Her father was, by then, on board. "She jumped on that girl like it was nobody's business," David told me. "She was like a little grasshopper."
When her parents divorced a few years later and her mother moved out, Esparza chose to stay with her father so she could continue training. She went on to win the Houston Regional Golden Gloves championship eight years in a row and to become, at 16, the youngest female fighter to win the National Championship. "We just started fighting and winning, fighting and winning," Silva said.
Esparza's behavior improved, too, and a year after she began boxing she returned to her regular school. Her savvy with the press can be attributed, at least in part, to the debate club, which Silva encouraged her to join once she began receiving media attention. "Because they'll put a microphone in front of your mouth," he told her, "and then what are you going to do?" By the time Esparza graduated from Pasadena High School, in 2007, she held a 4.1 grade point average and was class president.
Boxing's violence, for Esparza, has never been its primary appeal. Her objective isn't to hurt, but to outwit, outrun, and overpower her opponent more with her mind than with her hands. "And that's better than being angry," she said. "It's never going to go away."
Minutes before the opening bell of her bout with Cruz, Silva was speaking to Esparza in a low, stern tone. "Try to stay relaxed," he said. Esparza was sitting on a chair backstage. Her right knee was bouncing rapidly and her gaze was fixed not on Silva, who was crouched down in front of her, but on her feet. "The reason you're ranked first in the nation for six years straight is because you're the best," he said. "Don't go out there and doubt yourself. Go out there and be confident. Be patient. Remember to box."
When the announcer called Esparza to the ring, Christina Aguilera's "Fighter" came over the speakers. The audience cheered. As Esparza emerged from behind the curtain, her blank, anxious expression gave way to one of her self-assured smiles.
At the bell, the two boxers came at each other in a hurry and then stopped, as if they were two people who couldn't decide on a greeting. Esparza sprang forward first, with a fast left-right combination—known as a "one-two"—which Cruz seemed to anticipate and block easily. They bounced on the balls of their feet and moved clockwise, taking turns reaching for one another but catching only air. Each time one lunged forward, the other moved back. Some time into the first round, it was unclear whether either boxer had scored. The crowd wanted action. "Double jab right here, Tina!" yelled one of Cruz's fans. "Let's go!" hollered another. "Stop waiting on her!"
Among the voices, Esparza's father's was loudest. David, a plump, easily excitable man of small proportions, had jumped out of his seat at the first bell and was frantically pacing the aisle. "She don't want to fight you, Marlen!" he shouted. "She scared!" Esparza can always hear her father when she's in the ring; so can her opponents, which is sort of the point. But ever since a referee stopped one of Esparza's bouts when David screamed "Finish her!," he has had to choose his words of encouragement more carefully.
"In my English, I didn't mean 'Kill her,' or nothing," David says. "I just meant finish the fight. I thought I was helping." Due to the frequency and cost of travel, Carmen doesn't attend her daughter's tournaments, but she's been saving up to buy a ticket to London, should Esparza make it to the Olympics.
Chasing Cruz around the ring, Esparza delivered a blow with her right hand that sent her opponent backpedaling into the ropes. Esparza quickly buried another combination and followed it up with a series of rapid-fire punches to Cruz's torso. "Beautiful!," David screamed. Dodging Cruz's fast counterpunches, Esparza seemed to strike and duck in a single motion, like an angry bird pecking and darting out of reach. When the bell rang, Esparza led, 3–1.
When Silva reminded Esparza to box, he wasn't being patronizing. A few years ago, her only strategy in the ring was to win. She would pound her opponents relentlessly, exhausting them and sometimes coming out with a 20-point lead. But in 2009, when the International Olympic Committee added women's boxing to the 2012 program, Silva began researching international styles and videotaping amateur men's bouts. Esparza's reckless offensive style, he realized, wouldn't stand up at international competitions, where clean, efficient punches and impermeable defense were key to scoring points. (A decade ago, female amateur boxers were almost always trained with the aggressive professional style in mind, since many—not having the option to ever fight on the Olympic stage—eventually went pro.)
Silva decided to train Esparza to be a more mindful fighter, focused less on her strength and more on her opponents' weaknesses. "I had to get it into Marlen's head that it didn't matter if she won by one or 101," he said. "A win is a win."
Together, they began reviewing footage of Esparza's opponents, looking for defensive holes and devising custom fight plans. "I used to just fight, but now everything is mapped out before I get in there," Esparza told me. "If I say I'm going to box this girl and she starts getting really aggressive, and I get mad and want to start swinging with her, I just step back and say, No, that's not the game plan. That's not how I win.
To improve her versatility in the ring, Silva handpicked boys for Esparza to spar with—taller boys, stronger boys, faster boys, left-handed boys—to stand in for every imaginable opponent. Observing Esparza in the ring at international tournaments the following year, Joe Zanders, USA Boxing's national coach, took note of her new, calculating approach. "She was so knowledgeable about her opponents, that she could actually tell you, 'I want to go about it like this,'" Zanders says. "Watching her do that, and then actually execute it in the ring—it was really amazing."
Training for the Olympics also meant that Esparza, who had been accepted to Rice University, would have to delay school. For a while, she tried taking online courses at a community college, but then came her loss to Cruz last spring.
Esparza doesn't like to talk about that time. Most troubling was the sense of failure she began to feel around Silva and her father. "I'm supposed to be the robot," she said. "I'm supposed to do it right." Silva, who saw the loss not as Esparza's error but as his own, increased her workouts from several hours each day to a full-time commitment, leaving no time for classes.
On a typical day leading up to a competition, Esparza wakes up at about 8 o'clock and drives to a fitness center 45 minutes away, where she works with a strength trainer and swimming coach on her stamina and conditioning. She heads home for lunch, usually chicken breast or pork loin—no sauce, no seasoning—with vegetables. She takes a nap. In the afternoon, after Silva gets off work, she meets him at the boxing gym. There, she spars with the boys for up to nine rounds, jumps rope, performs hand-eye coordination exercises, runs plyometric drills, hits the bags—Silva used to have her wear a painter's mask while doing so, to approximate high-altitude training—and finishes up with a grueling calisthenic workout modeled after that of Manny Pacquiao, the Filipino pro fighter. Sometimes she throws up and keeps going.
In the evening, after the gym, Esparza runs anywhere from one to four miles, depending on what Silva prescribes. If she has any energy left, she likes to go over to her sister Dalila's house to see her nieces and nephew. "Or she'll call and say 'Can you guys come over? Just for a little?,'" Dalila told me.
In some ways, Esparza is still the child she was when she first walked into Silva's gym. She is uncomfortable around adults she doesn't know and prefers the company of kids. Her favorite foods come from Wendy's and McDonald's, and she loves Starbucks' sugary frappuccinos. When she has free time, she likes to watch the Nickelodeon channel; her favorite movie is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. At 22, she has made only one real decision in her life: to box.
After the Olympics, Esparza plans to quit boxing. She's not interested in turning pro, which she sees as a lesser, sloppier version of the amateurs and, given the costs of trainers, agents, and promoters, not especially lucrative. Instead, she plans to start college and study to be an anesthesiologist. Someday, she'd like to get married and have two, maybe three, children. Her real life, she's always told Silva, can begin only after she leaves the sport.
As the bell announced the second round, Esparza and Cruz skipped toward one another with more purpose. Whereas Cruz likes to draw her opponents out and score her points defensively, Esparza prefers to come forward. But the strategy she and Silva had devised for beating Cruz consisted of gaining a lead in the first round and then pulling back, placing the offensive burden on Cruz. When I spoke with Cruz the night before the bout, she seemed to anticipate this tactic. "I know she ain't going to run at me like she used to," she said. "It's going to be more like a chess match."
At the start of the round, Cruz took the center of the ring, seemingly accepting the role of aggressor. Esparza was ducking Cruz's jabs, keeping her hands so high that her gloves obstructed her face. Cruz switched up her combinations, throwing an uppercut and an overhand right that broke through Esparza's defense. Even in the more passive role, Esparza countered every one of Cruz's advances, shooting forward each time Cruz's fist withdrew. At the ring of the bell, Cruz had added two points and Esparza three, for an overall score of 6–3 Esparza.
In the corner, Silva pulled out a stool for Esparza and tipped a trickle of bottled water into her mouth. Kneeling in front of her, he reminded her to be patient. "Don't force it," he said. "We're up."
Unlike other boxers, who often question their coaches' corner commands, Esparza trusts Silva's instincts more than her own. "If he tells me spin three times and hit her in the face, I'll spin three times and hit her in the face," she told me. As a constant presence in her life for more than 10 years, Silva has played the role not only of coach, but also of overprotective father, nagging older brother, and closest friend. Now that Esparza is an adult, some people wonder whether Silva, who looks younger than his age, might also be her boyfriend. And though he is not—he's married and has three children—they share the intimacy of two people who have grown extraordinarily dependent on one another over time.
When Esparza was a teenager, she would ask Silva's permission to go out on weekends and see her friends. He allowed her to attend her high-school prom but waited up with her father in the living room. "Marlen's dad was the laid-back dad," said Kasandra Hernandez, the only high-school friend Esparza has stayed close with. "But Rudy was, like, her strict dad."
Because Esparza's parents had never talked to her about boys, Silva took it upon himself to have a series of what he called "father talks" with her. "He told me in a nice way, 'Don't be a slut,' basically," Esparza recalled. "He said, 'I know young girls and I know fast girls, and you don't need to be like that.'"
Esparza doesn't have a boyfriend, but guys she's dated in the past have felt uncomfortable about her relationship with Silva. Some asked why she always had to abide by his rules; others wondered whether Silva might be in love with her. "But it has nothing to do with love," Esparza said. "It's about the commitment we have to boxing. Normal people who have regular lives and no boundaries just can't understand it." According to Silva, his wife doesn't object to the amount of time he devotes to his boxer. (Esparza: "I don't think she likes me.")
A few days after the Spokane tournament, Silva showed me around his gym, which he had recently moved into a small, carpeted space adjacent to Pastor Brady's Houston church. A collage of photos taped to one wall—a shrine of sorts for the younger fighters to admire—is almost exclusively dedicated to Esparza. But in a few of the pictures, Silva stands next to Sylvia Villalpando, a female boxer he once coached, who has since left the sport.
"Marlen probably wants me to take that picture down," Silva said. The two women competed for his time and attention, Silva explained, and Esparza in particular seemed to grow resentful. "I think she felt like, 'Hey, this girl just came in here. I'm your star,'" he said.
Another coach at the gym, a pro boxer turned pastor called Termite (the moniker is inspired by his family's pest-control business), told me that Esparza feels an instant rivalry with any female fighter who walks into the gym. "She'll get the girl's attention and let her know she's the boss," Termite said. "If you're in the ring with Marlen and you're a female, you're probably going to get your butt whupped."
Silva and Esparza bicker often, but the worst fight they've ever had occurred last year, when Esparza, for the first and only time in her career, considered leaving Silva for another coach. Neither can recall—or will say—how the dispute began, but for weeks they didn't speak. They reunited only at the urging of Esparza's father. "I told her, 'Those other guys don't know you like Rudy,'" David said. "'If you're going to finish your career and make it to the Olympics, you have to do it with Rudy.'" In retrospect, Esparza doubts she could have ever left Silva, even if she wanted to.
When I asked Silva how knowing Esparza has changed his life, he stumbled over his words for a few minutes. "Honestly, without me, maybe there wouldn't be no her," he finally said. "But without her, maybe there wouldn't be no me."
At the third bell, Cruz sprang toward Esparza with newfound energy. Esparza was trying to reclaim the offensive position at the center of the ring, but Cruz refused to budge, driving Esparza to the periphery and flicking her right fist again and again. When Cruz scored, Esparza responded with a series of body jabs, but she seemed to barely penetrate Cruz's defense. Soon enough, Cruz scored again, this time with a mighty hook that sent Esparza's head ricocheting. Cruz's message was clear: the first two rounds might as well have been her warm-up; now she had decided to win. Cruz scored once more before the bell, winning the round 4–3 and closing the gap to just two points.
After a short break, the referee lifted his hand and the boxers surged into each other for the final round. In a matter of seconds, Cruz landed two hooks. Esparza, flustered, lowered her hands, and Cruz struck again with a hook and a quick right hand. As Cruz continued to apply pressure, Christy Halbert, who was narrating the bout for a Webcast, observed that Esparza appeared to be slipping. From the corner, Silva shouted, "Keep your hands up!"
When Esparza is in the ring, the cacophony of thoughts that torment her before a fight goes silent. Suddenly aware of every muscle in her body, she feels as if she has complete command not only of her own movements but of her opponent's. She knows what's coming and how she will respond to it, as though she is taking a test to which she already knows the answers. There is not a moment in her life when she feels happier, or more certain of herself. "I feel like I can do anything I want when I'm in there, when I want to do it," she says. "Like I'm not even the same person."
I once asked Esparza if that other person—the one she is outside the ring—lacks control. She nodded. "I'm told what to do and when to do it," she said. "Boxing controls me, and I don't control anything. I'm a boxer and I box and that's all I can do."
Now, in the ring with her biggest rival, that is what she did. Esparza raised her hands and took a wider stance, setting her feet to hit hard. After landing a powerful right fist, she peeled away before Cruz could counter. Esparza regained her rhythm hit by hit, coming at Cruz harder, stronger, faster than she had when she first entered the ring. She then buried a combination of hooks and jabs with such force that Cruz inexplicably turned her back to her opponent, prompting a warning from the ref. Esparza's father clutched his head in his hands. "Ooh-ya-ya! Ooh-ya-ya!" he yelled. "All night long, Marlen, all night long! Just like that!"
Cruz was swiveling furiously and swinging in vain. Esparza delivered clean, beautiful hits. She flicked one combination, then another. And before Cruz could get her, she was gone.
When the final bell rang, Esparza had won the bout, 13–10. Two days later, when she beat 23-year-old Tyrieshia Douglas in the finals, Esparza became the flyweight champion of the U.S. Olympic trials.
The tournament ended on a Saturday in late February, and that Monday Esparza was welcomed back to Houston with a surprise party. At her church, just off Interstate 10, a mixed crowd of parishioners, boxers, trainers, and kids gathered around two store-bought cakes in a room with linoleum floors and red, white, and blue balloons bobbing beneath a low ceiling. When Termite led Esparza and Silva inside, everyone yelled "Surprise!" and applauded. Esparza summoned one of her wide, friendly smiles, but she looked tired. The back of her navy-blue Nike training shirt said Team Esparza; the front said Beast.
Some people snapped pictures on their cellphones; others asked her to autograph newspaper clippings. A little boy handed her a bouquet of purple flowers. A woman from the congregation presented her with a gift of a gold pendant in the shape of a fish, a nod to her first name.
A second party was waiting for Esparza at her house, where a local news van was parked in the muddy driveway and a cameraman roamed the kitchen. In the large, carpeted living room, Carmen was watching Dalila's kids. David appeared to be in a good mood, supervising ribs on the barbecue and offering his guests drinks provided by Coca-Cola, one of Esparza's sponsors. Her parents had invited a few of her friends from high school, but she hadn't seen them in years and felt awkward greeting them. Mostly, she looked antsy, wandering from room to room like someone brought to a party full of people she did not know.
"It was annoying," Esparza told me a few days later as we were driving to lunch. The golden fish was dangling around her neck, but the purple bouquet had wilted in the backseat of her car. For the first time since we met, she was wearing non-workout clothing: jeans cuffed above the ankle, a heather-gray tank with pink flowers, and sandals. "It's not that I'm unappreciative, but I'm always so shut off that I don't know what to say to people."
For lunch, Esparza had chosen the Olive Garden, one of her favorite places to eat, and she ordered an entrée that combined lasagna, chicken Parmesan, and fettuccine Alfredo in a single dish. Now she could eat anything she wished. But soon she would have to resume her regular diet to prepare for the 2012 Women's World Boxing Championships, in Qinhuangdao, China, in May.
Though Esparza had won the U.S. Olympic trials, she would still have to compete against flyweights from other countries to make it to the Games in July. Only eight boxers in each of the three weight classes would go on to London from the Worlds, with an additional four women to be selected by the Olympic commission. Up against some 60 flyweights from around the world who would be competing for these spots, Esparza's chances were good. At international competitions in recent years, she had won two gold medals, two silver, and one bronze. Her greatest challengers in May, she predicted, would be Ren Cancan, of China, and Tatyana Kob, of Ukraine.
Looking past China to the Olympics, Esparza could imagine a scenario in which she wins the gold medal—but not one in which she doesn't. "I feel like it will complete me—like it will make me what I want to be," she said. "I don't want to see someone else win." Esparza put her fork down, and a tear slid down her cheek. "It would be like someone else living what you're supposed to be living, and feeling what you're supposed to be feeling. It's like someone stealing what I want to be." She paused again, wiping her eyes with her cloth napkin. "Failure is when your best isn't good enough, and I'm trying as hard as I possibly can."
Esparza finished her entrée and we ordered dessert—fried zeppoles with chocolate sauce. When I asked her how she envisions her life after the Olympics—after boxing, that is—she recalled driving to the gym one morning and seeing two girls, about her age, who looked like they were going to the mall. Esparza wondered what the rest of their day might be like, whether they would see their friends, or go to the movies. "And I was thinking, What the heck would I do all day?" She considered this for a moment. "It's like a small kitten or an inside dog that scratches at the door all day, but when someone finally opens it, they don't want to go," she said. "They just look."


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Finding your perfect size is a breeze! We carry a wide range of sizes including women's, petites, plus-size, juniors, men's big and tall, babies, and toddlers. Think of Bealls Florida as your one-stop shop that gives you the best styles, incredible prices and unmatched customer service.
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subset: commoncrawl


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[Editor's note: Knowing the longitude-latitude (latLng) bounding box of a feature gives us a clue as to what map scale or zoom level is required to fit the feature into our display area and thus what base map scale set to draw from. While this image does not provide actual coordinates, it visually establishes what such bounding boxes look like (further refinements can be had with respect to crossing the 180° meridian, note New Zealand). ]
Republished from Berkeley GADM (Global Administrative Areas).
Here is a map of all countries and their bounding boxes (when using a lat/long "projection"), highlighting those countries that cross the international date line, and for which these bounding boxes make little sense (this map is provided for diversion only).


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Both WEEI and CSNNE announced their plans for Patriots coverage this season. Both will have similar programming to years past, with a few minor changes.
Comcast SportsNet Announces 2013 Patriots Coverage
Some of the highlights of the CSNNE coverage are as follows:
- Logan Mankins will appear in Postgame Live after every game (Wes Welker was the guest last season)
- Troy Brown and Ty Law return to Patriots Wednesday Live (Brown only) and Pre/Postgame Live
- Mike Flynn joins the rotation for Pre/Postgame Live
The same format of a two-hour pregame show along with a 90-minute postgame show will be used this season. New England Football Night returns on Thursdays with New England Tailgate at 7:00pm, Patriots Football Weekly at 7:30pm and Quick Slants in its new time at 8:00pm.
WEEI will once again offer Patriots Monday and Patriots Friday, along with NFL Sunday with Dale Arnold, Chris Price and Matt Chatham (and weekly call-ins from Tom E Curran.) and The Real Postgame Show with Butch Stearns, Steve DeOssie and Fred Smerlas.


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Interior Castle is the work of 16th century Carmelite nun and Christian mystic St. Teresa of Avila. She wrote Interior Castle as a spiritual guide to union with God. Her inspiration for the work came from a vision she received from God. In it, there was a crystal globe with seven mansions, with God in the innermost mansion. St. Teresa interpreted this vision as an allegory for the soul's relationship with God; each mansion represents one place on a path towards the "spiritual marriage"–i.e. union–with God in the seventh mansion.
A sequel and continuation of Ascent of Mount Carmel, the Dark Night of the Soul is a spiritually moving and mystical book. In it, St. John of the Cross continues his description of the soul's journey–the "dark night"–to the "divine union of the love of God."
Read Ascent of Mount Carmel at CCEL
Read Dark Night of the Soul at CCEL
St. Therese of Lisieux was born at Alencon, Normandy. In 1886 she underwent a religious conversion and thereafter dedicated herself to monastic life. Entering the Carmelite convent at Lisieux at fifteen, she was appointed assistant novice mistress in 1893. One year before her death (1897) from tuberculosis, she volunteered to join the Carmelite missionaries in China.
Her devotional book, The Little Way, was widely acclaimed, as was her autobiography The Story of a Soul. Miracles of healing and prophecy soon were attributed to her name, and an account of these was appended in 1907 to the autobiography.
Read The Story of A Soul At CCEL
Read The Poems of St. Therese at CCEL


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Eva Rausing, 48, was found in an advanced state of decomposition more than a week ago in the London mansion she shared with her husband, Hans Kristian Rausing, the son of one of the world's richest men.
Rausing had a troubled past. In 2008 she attempted to smuggle crack cocaine into the American embassy in London, and her problems with drugs didn't end there.
"She had been introduced to drugs at an early age," Liz Brewer, a friend of Rausing, tells CNN's Nima Elbagir. "But she got married. She seemed to be very happy."
Watch the video above for rare footage of Rausing with her husband in London. Filmed in May, it is the last time she was seen alive.
Rausing met her husband in a drug rehab facility more than 21 years ago. "When I met him – he wasn't reclusive, he was far more difficult to talk to," Brewer says.
While sobriety remained a constant struggle in Rausing's life, she focused her attention and wealth on an addiction prevention charity. "She gave a great deal of money to us over the years," says Eric Carlin, the founder of Mentor UK.
Post by: Nima Elbagir
Filed under: Crime & Punishment
such tragedy; be it an individuals death, or their murder, or their struggle with substances.
Anderson Cooper goes beyond the headlines to tell stories from many points of view, so you can make up your own mind about the news. Tune in weeknights at 8 and 10 ET on CNN.
Questions or comments? Send an email
Want to know more? Go behind the scenes with AC361°


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Choreographer, Owner immmaBEAST Dance Company
Orignally from Indiana, Will "WilldaBeast" Adams moved to LA to pursue his dance career. Dancing for artists such as Usher, T-Pain, The Black Eyed Peas, Jason Derulo, Zendaya, 5th Harmony, Demi Lovato, GLEE, X-Factor, Nissan, MTV, Butterfinger, and Madonna he found a love for choreography. This allowed him to choreograph for artists including T-Pain, DJ Tiësto, GRL, Erika Jayne, ABDC, So You Think You Can Dance, and Nike.
In 2013, Willdabeast created the dance company immaBEAST and dropped the first official video "Dope". Since then, immaBEAST has become one of the leading brands, companies, and influences in the hip hop dance world.


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Look, it's already pretty clear that the folks at IO Interactive like a particularly adolescent style of joke-making, what with the closet-humping and all. But the latest effort at promoting the Square Enix published game invites you to fling their poor taste at your Facebook friends. It's pretty tacky.
As spotted on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Hire Hitman is a site that hooks into your Facebook profile and lets you aim the series' lethal protagonist at your social network buddies. Not too bad so far, right? The icky stuff comes when you pick
the reason you want Agent 47 to kill your friends' identifiable traits. In the drop down menu, nestled in with other rude observations, the selections include small genitals for men or small breasts for women. Classy, no?
Completing the selections generates a video that has the data you input popping up on Agent 47's laptop and pictures from your target's photo albums flit on-screen to represent flashes of their life passing before their eyes as they die.
Maybe you really like Hitman and want to get your friends to play it. Fine. But, it doesn't really seem like insulting them with bullying language is the way to go about it. And, sure, the defense might be that you and/or Square Enix are having a laugh in the spirit of their game. But the person on the receiving end might not be laughing at all.
Update: As of this writing, the Hire Hitman site appears to have been pulled down by Square Enix and previously generated hits redirect to the main Hitman homepage.
Update 2: Square Enix has sent along a statement that apologizes for their Hitman Facebook app:
Earlier today we launched an app based around Hitman: Absolution that allowed you to place virtual hits on your Facebook friends. Those hits would only be viewable by the recipient, and could only be sent to people who were confirmed friends.
We were wide of the mark with the app, and following feedback from the community we decided the best thing to do was remove it completely and quickly. This we've now done.
We're sorry for any offense caused by this.


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76ers to re-brand
Deep Sixer: Even with the pre-draft workout on Saturday for Ohio State center B.J. Mullens, it is, of course, much more likely the 76ers will draft a guard in Thursday's NBA Draft.
Even with the pre-draft workout on Saturday for Ohio State center B.J. Mullens, it is, of course, much more likely the 76ers will draft a guard in Thursday's NBA Draft.
Here are, in our opinion, the Sixers 3 most likely picks:
1.) Eric Maynor, VCU: When speculation first began, the front-runner was definitely North Carolina's Ty Lawson, but it seems that right now Maynor is a very likely pick. Both Maynor and Lawson are true point guards, but word is that Maynor is one of the most NBA-ready players in the draft. If last year's starting PG, unrestricted free agent Andre Miller, doesn't re-sign, Maynor would at least provide an option.
2.) Ty Lawson, North Carolina: His stock has dropped since pre-draft workouts began, falling "clearly behind" Syracuse's Johnny Flynn. The knock seems to be he is injury-prone and a product of the UNC system. Regardless, his leadership qualities, speed, and transition game would give the Sixers an option at point guard, but consensus seems to be Lawson would first need some time as a backup.
3.) Terrence Williams, Louisville, SG/SF; Jeff Teague, Wake Forest, combo guard: Ok, so we said 3 top picks and this makes it 4. Williams is a 6-foot-6 shooting guard who is very athletic, although he seems to slip into the small forward role, too, and we know the Sixers don't need another tweener who slips into the small forward spot. Teague is listed as a point guard, but is more of a combo guard. He has a ton of upside, but the Sixers do have a combo guard in Lou.
And ...
Last week the 76ers announced they will re-launch their brand identity tomorrow in the main lobby of the Comcast Center on JFK Blvd. Sixers General Manager Ed Stefanski and new head coach Eddie Jordan will be present. This "major announcement" is scheduled for 2 p.m. and includes a free t-shirt and multimedia presentation on the Comcast experience (the public is invited to attend). Afterwards, the Sixers will begin a T-Shirt Tour from a double-decker bus, with the t-shirts courtesy of Adidas. The tour begins at the Comcast Center, continues through to the circle at the Art Museum, loops around Main Line Health's Lankenau Hospital, then west up Lancaster Ave.


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How can I help fight poverty? What in the world can I do? The problems are just so big, and I'm just so small. I want to be used by you, God, but I just don't know what to do.
I've thought and prayed these things many times. When viewing this world with its huge statistics of dread that loom over us (one BILLION people living in poverty), have you ever just felt stuck? Paralyzed? Anaesthetized? Confused? Helpless? Hopeless?
I've felt all those things. Usually when I'm looking at two things:
- The enormous earth, jam-packed with dreadful statistics, and
- Me
They both seem like depressing prospects.
Thank God this is not about me or you. Thank God for His grace. When the Lord called out looking for someone to be his messenger, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" (Isaiah 6:8, NIV), He didn't say "Whom shall I send who has a doctorate degree? Who will go for us who's a super-swell, smart, sophisticated, experienced guy?"
No, God doesn't put the same prerequisites on his servants that we put on ourselves. He seems quite eager to use each one of us as his servants, just the way he made us.
I recently wrote a book about responding to poverty, Hope Lives, and between you and me, this is a bit crazy. Don't tell anyone (especially my marketers), but I'm just a goofball from Colorado who loves donuts and reality television. But I'm a goofball who (quite audaciously) called out to God, "Here am I, send me!"
And you know what? God (quite audaciously, in my opinion), said "OK." I'm tempted to think He might need a stricter HR department, but those are just the lies of the enemy. God wants to use each one of us (I mean you) to reach out and help His hurting world, no matter how insufficient we think we are.
We might not all be missionaries or nurses or have doctorate degrees in poverty, but God did plant a little seed, a little talent, in each of us that He wants to use and grow. There's a guy who works here at Compassion whom God gave the talent of rapping. Yes, rapping. And he's using it to speak out against poverty. There's a woman who loves to write letters, and she's using this gift to write letters of encouragement and hope to dozens of children in poverty.
Maybe you can't write or rap, but what can you do to serve others? Bake? Fix cars? Persuade? Sew? Tap Dance?
No matter how small (or random) our talent seems, God can use it. He can multiply our offering that seems so measly and make it into something incredible, just like the little boy with the two bitty fish that God used to feed 5,000 (John 6). God gave me the gift of writing.
The small step of faith I took in this has now been multiplied by God, through Hope Lives church kits which guide churches through a five-week journey of exploring how God wants us to respond to poverty. Now how crazy is that?
I believe God is waiting for each one of us to look past the looming, seemingly impossible statistics, forget ourselves and our own insufficiencies, and simply say: "Here I am God, send me." And I bet we'll be flat-out flabbergasted by what he does.


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RT @hazechu: People need to cop the hell on.
Those who don't think there's a racism issue here at home or play it down are part of the pro…01/06/2020 20:44:15
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MNuet: creating a digital home for classical music
While today's big classical news story is the Minnesota Orchestra's lockout, it's certainly not the only story out there.
And Matt Peiken has created a new website aimed at being a one-stop destination for all that's going on in the Twin Cities classical music scene.
MNuet.com is what Peiken calls "the community of classical music online."
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What does that mean? The news, analysis and community conversation found here is funded by donations from individuals. Make a gift of any amount today to support this resource for everyone.
It's a new online magazine that's created in partnership with the classical music institutions in the Twin Cities. They are paying members, and their content becomes the core of the site. Around that I create podcasts, I produce videos and I have a live performance showcase every month at Bryant Lake Bowl, all featuring MNuet members.
A video profile of One Voice, Mixed Chorus, produced by MNuet.com creator, Matt Peiken. Peiken was once the man behind "Three Minute Egg," a local video series covering the Twin Cities arts scene.
Peiken says while the Twin Cities has its big players - the Minnesota Orchestra, SPCO, Minnesota Opera - MNuet.com also features the lesser known community orchestras.
One of the things I like about MNuet is that the design is such that all the headlines are the same size, all the text is the same size, and all the photos are the same size, so there's no sense of heirarchy. Now because the SPCO has a full season, they're going to have more stories - just by virtue of the fact that their calendar is fuller - but no story has a higher placement on a page because of the size of the orchestra.
Peiken says not many classical groups have robust websites, nor have they figured out a way to effectively incorporate social media into their schedules. MNuet seeks to bring all of their content together into one place and do the social media work for them, and expand their audiences in the process.
Even Minnesota Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera and the SPCO... none of them has a destination website. They're not drawing fans to their website on a daily basis to see what's going on in the classical music community. So on MNuet, Minnesota Orchestra gets the eyes of the SPCO audience, the Minnesota Opera gets the eyes of the Minensota Orchestra audience, and so on.
Equally, Peiken hopes audiences will find in MNuet an easy means of exploring the riches of the local classical music scene.
Most people if they're plugged into anything it might be one institution that they support or two. They might have season tickets to the SPCO, but they don't know what's happening in the broader sense. It's really hard to find what's happening, to sift through the morass of what's happening in our gorgeous art scene here to find out what's going on in classical music. So for an audience I know that my site chiefly is going to serve as a calendar. That will be their entry point.
Peiken say he won't review concerts, but he will aggregate the coverage of online news organizations.
As for the timing of the launch of MNuet.com, Peiken admits he could not have picked a worse time, given the contract negotiations of the two major orchestras.
But by my estimate there are 65 - 70 classical music organizations in this town, if you include college level choirs and music groups. So it's not just about SPCO and the Minnesota Orchestra. There's Nautilus Music Theater, Mixed Precipitation, Minnesota Symphonia and Accordo, just to name a few. So MNuet will still thrive because there's still so much happening.
The next MNuet showcase is tomorrow night at 7pm at Bryant Lake Bowl. With a "back to school" theme, it features graduates of the U of M's School of Music (known as The Renegade Ensemble) along with musicians from the Minnesota Youth Symphonies and Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies.


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ArtBeat: What to See
Terry Conrad: Short Stories Part 2 @ Courthouse Gallery, Lake George. Terry Conrad investigates ideas of decoration, waste, narrative and process using print media and its language to explore themes of systems, geology and the landscape. His "found object" printing presses, constructed of piles and tiers from his growing collection of scraps and recycled materials, suggest geological layers or strata. Opening reception: Saturday, March 8, 4-6pm. (Through April 11)
In the Black @ Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson. Black painting, drawing, encaustics and sculpture by Betsy Weis, Sarah Berney, Joseph Maresca, Ralph Stout, Kris Perry, David Paulson, Jay Matthews, Tona Wilson and Linda Cross. Opening reception: Saturday, March 8, 6-8pm. (Through April 13)
Darren Waterston: Uncertain Beauty @ MASS MoCA, North Adams. Painter Darren Waterston's installation Filthy Lucre — the centerpiece of Uncertain Beauty — is a contemporary re-imagining of James McNeill Whistler's 1876 decorative masterpiece Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room, reconstructed as a sumptuous ruin. Inside, viewers will find Waterston's re-interpretations of Whistler's paintings, along with stalactite-like ceiling fixtures and crumbling shelving replete with 250 hand-painted ceramic vessels. Glaze will appear to ooze down the wall, and the shimmering central peacock mural will partially melt into the floor in a puddle of gold. A soundscape featuring voice and cello composed by the New York-based trio BETTY will be heard intermittently through the space, punctuating the silence with hauntingly beautiful reverberations. The installation hints at parallels between the excesses and inequities of the Gilded Age and the social and economic disparities of our own time. At the same time, the work raises questions about patronage and the relationships between artists, collectors, and institutions. Opens Saturday, March 8. Opening reception: Saturday, March 29, 5-7pm. Performance by Filthy Lucre soundscape composers, BETTY: Saturday, March 22, 8pm. Artist talk: Thursday, August 7, 6pm. Panel discussion presented in partnership with The Mount: Thursday, August 28, 6pm (Through February 1, 2015)
The Earth is Our Mothers @ Daniel Arts Center, Great Barrington. Weavings and mixed-media assemblages by Wendy A. Rabinowitz that explore women's unique stories and themes of sustainability. (Through April 6)
Dancing Princesses: The Picture Book Art of Ruth Sanderson @ Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge. A renowned fantasy artist and illustrator of children's literature, Ruth Sanderson has created imagery for more than seventy-five picture books, many of which bring classic tales to life. This special holiday installation, featuring more than sixty original illustrations for classic and original stories, includes her personal favorite—The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Now in the permanent collection of the Norman Rockwell Museum, Ruth's paintings and studies for this enchanting tale will be accompanied by the opulent costumes that she commissioned specifically for her work. (Through March 9)
On Being: Exploring Psychological and Spiritual Well-Being Through the Creative Process @ Mandeville Gallery, Schenectady. Figurative works by Valerie Hammond, Keun Young Park and Sheila Ross and their visual explorations of well-being through the symbolic use of destruction and reconstruction of form, the incorporation of spiritual iconography and the direct confrontation of mortality. (Through March 9)
Kate Hamilton: Big Shoes to Fill @ Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham. Works by Kate Hamilton exploring the nature of clothing through design, sculpture and costume. (Through March 9)
Rebecca Allan: Ground / Water @ Hudson Opera House. Rebecca Allan is a New York-based painter whose work centers on the landscape and themes of music. Rivers, tributaries, and coastal regions of the Northeast, Pacific Northwest, and northern England are the artist's primary sites of investigation and inspiration. (Through March 15)
Once Upon a Time @ The Laffer Gallery, Schuylerville. Paintings by Christopher Murray and sculptures by Cheryl Horning. (Through March 16)
Caitlin Masley: other mental landscapes @ HVCC Teaching Gallery, Troy. Brooklyn-based artist Caitlin Masley creates sculpture, drawings, installations and photography that capture the spaces and places she sees as "monuments to failure," symbolic of things we create or build and then desert or destroy. (Through March 22)
Lauren Kalman: But if the Crime is Beautiful… Sienna Gallery, Lenox. This ongoing project by Detroit-based artist Lauren Kalman consists of fabricated and found objects combined with the body to produce sculptural compositions, which are then documented in photographs. The title of the series is derived from Adolf Loos' 1910 lecture, Ornament and Crime, that refers to the naive (in his view) population's defense of ornament as long as it is beautiful. Loos' proposition is that ornament is regressive and primitive, and that in his contemporary society only degenerates and criminals are decorated, including women. The "crime" in Kalman's work points not only to the decorated but also to deviant sexuality and female sexuality, especially 19th and early 20th century constructions. (Through March 23)
Mud Season @ Southern Vermont Arts Center, Manchester. A group exhibition of paintings, sculpture, photographs, mixed media and jewelry as well as solo exhibitions of paintings by Gerard Natale and Barbara Harshman. (Through March 23)
Herbert Reichert: Apocrypha @ John Davis Gallery, Hudson. A solo exhibition of paintings, photographs and sculpture by Herbert Reichert. (Through March 23)
color/form @ Saratoga Arts. Works by Jackie Brown, Adam Daily and Dustin London, whose bright and dramatic surfaces draw viewers into manufactured worlds where abstract ideas of systems and intuition serve as pathways. (Through March 29)
Tabula Rasa @ Center for Photography at Woodstock. Anouk Kruithof, Sara Skorgan Teigen and Sonja Thomsen represent a growing interest in forgoing the practice of injecting new images into the overflowing stream that subsumes us on a daily basis. Instead, through their site-specific photo-based installations, each expands on the language of memory, the veracity of photographic impression, and the infinite space held in between and around the photograph. Also on display: Sara Marcel: May The Road Rise To Meet You, a solo exhibition of photographs from one of the last business trips with a man who spent 40 years as a traveling salesman, her father. (Through March 30)
Ju money 2014 @ Arts Center of the Capital Region, Troy. Sang Wook Lee's solo exhibition features two new large-scale works that were designed and installed specifically for The Arts Center's Main Gallery. The title piece Ju money 2014 is inspired by the traditional Korean costume "hanbok" and the small pouches, or "bokjumoney," associated with it. These small pouches carried by children to collect red beans, and now money, provide a symbol of good will for the New Year. Lee's other installation, from his Ramen Noodle Series, is a unique sculpture is made entirely of small blocks of ramen noodle that build a larger, unified structure. Influenced largely by culture and the environment around us, subtleties of human nature become an important part of the work.
(Through March 30)
Nancy Johnson & Dori Latman: Recent Painting @ 510 Warren Street Gallery, Hudson. (Through March 30)
From The Apennines to the Hudson Valley @ Martinez Gallery, Troy. A solo exhibition of works by noted iPhone photographer Dan Burkholder. (Through March 31)
Blue Plastic Bubbles: Paintings by Lamar Peterson @ University Art Museum, Albany. Inspired by CNN, children's books, elementary school bulletin boards and horror movies, Lamar Peterson is best known for his candy-colored, meticulously-rendered narrative paintings of the black suburban everyman and his nuclear family. Also on display: American Playlist: Selections from the University at Albany Art Collections featuring works that cut a wide swath across American art, history and culture from the early 1900s through 2013, including personal responses from the UAlbany community. Reception: Tuesday, February 25, 5-7pm. Artist's talk: Tuesday, February 25, 4pm. (Through April 5)
Jason Middlebrook @ MASS MoCA, North Adams. For the past decade, Jason Middlebrook has been exploring the complex relationship between man and nature in his sculptures, installations, paintings and large-scale drawings. Responding to the unusual scale of MASS MoCA's gallery, the artist will be working with planks that in some instances reach tree-like heights, while others will retain a human scale. Middlebrook will also debut a new monumental mobile that will function like a fountain within the gallery. Titled Falling Water after Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic Kaufman residence, the work continues the artist's exploration of manufactured nature while adding a twist to Wright's notions of living in harmony with the environment. (Through April 7)
Joseph Montgomery: Five Sets Five Reps @ Mass Moca, North Adams. New York-based painter Joseph Montgomery creates compact abstract assemblages (many measuring only 12 x 10 inches) by layering a range of materials — a base vocabulary of sorts — including wood, clay, cardboard, fiberglass, paper, and wire. These elements take on the appearance of painterly gesture, each functioning like a brushstroke. The earliest of these works developed from the artist's attempts to veil or destroy paintings which he found too earnest or too personal. These rejected works become a support for his subsequent collages and are at times cannibalized as material fragments in newer works. (Through April 7)
Guillaume Leblon @ MASS MoCA, North Adams. This first solo exhibition of Paris-based sculptor Guillaume Leblon's work in a U.S. museum will feature a selection of works made over the last decade, in addition to two major new projects created for MASS MoCA. While his works refuse a single reading, they often conjure images of the ruin and the passage of time, bringing the present and the past into contact. Leblon can transform everyday components into sculptures that attain a relic-like quality or the aura of a classical statue.. (Through April 7)
A Fair Wage: Drawings by a Working Artist @ Spring Street Gallery, Saratoga Springs. A solo exhibition of drawings by David Greenberger. 110 Spring Street, 518-587-6433. (Through April 11)
David Greenberger: one updown @ Tang Teaching Museum and Gallery, Saratoga Springs. In a companion exhibition to David Greenberger: One Upon, opening next month, Elevator Music 26 features over 100 short recorded pieces by David Greenberger and a variety of celebrated musical collaborators from the past twenty years. (Through April 13)
Graphic Jews: Negotiating Identity in Sequential Art @ The Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs. A selection of graphic novels by contemporary Jewish artists that tell stories about Jews, offering both a closer look at sequential art and insight into some of the many ways Jews have figured and reconfigured their Jewish identities. (Through April 13)
David Greenberger: One Upon @ The Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs. Greenwich artist David Greenberger explores the individuality, integrity and humanity of the elderly. For over thirty years Greenberger has combined fragments of their conversations with music created in collaboration with professional musicians, to transform the "rich language of personal poetics" into short sound pieces that give listeners a window into the minds of older people. This exhibition transforms the Tang's mezzanine into an intimate theater space where one audience member at a time listens to a two-minute performance by David Greenberger and his band, A Strong Dog. (In conjunction with this event series, Elevator Music 26 features over 100 short pieces by David Greenberger and his musical collaborators from the past twenty years.) Two-Minute Performances in a One-Seat Theater: Sunday March 9, 2–5 pm, Tuesday, March 18, 11–2 pm and Thursday April 3, 6–9 pm. (Through April 13)
Ansel Adams: Early Works @ The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls. An exhibition of forty early works by the legendary master of American landscape photography that illustrates the evolution of his style, from the warm-toned, painterly images of the 1920s, to the sharp-focused" straight photography work that is associated with his co-founding of Group f/64 with Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham in the 1930s, and, after the War, toward a cooler, higher-contrast style. Also on display is Photo-Secession: Painterly Masterworks of Turn-of-the-Century Photography, an exhibition featuring original masterworks from an international circle of painterly photographers known as The Photo-Secession. The American triumvirate of Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen and Paul Strand are represented along with other key figures in pictorialist photography from both sides of the Atlantic, including Clarence White, Gertrude Käsebier, Alvin Langdon Coburn and Frederick Evans. (Through April 20)
Roots and Rhythms 2014 @ Shelnutt Gallery, Troy. An exhibition in honor of Black History Month that includes many artists who have shown their work in the Shelnutt Gallery over the past decade: Kwame Marcus Anderson, Gregory Coates, Francelise Dawkins, Lamerol Gatewood, Femi J Johnson, Marlene Marshall, Reginald Madison, Montalvo Brothers, George Simmons, , Sergio G. Tornero, Stephen J. Tyson, Ron Walton and Frank Wimberley. (Through April 20)
Zanele Muholi @ Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown. Internationally recognized South African photographer and visual activist Zanele Muholi bears witness to the experiences of black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and intersexed (LGBTI) individuals from South Africa and other African countries. In a social context in which homosexuality is often perceived as un-African and an affront to national identity, her photographs provide affirming depictions of same-sex intimacy and desires. In this exhibition, three of the artist's widely acclaimed photographic series are joined with documentary footage created by Ikanyiso, a media collective founded by Muholi in 2009 to further confront discrimination and broaden the visual representation of black queer life. (Through April 27)
Gail Giles: Pathways & Waterways @ The Chatham Bookstore. A series of large charcoal drawings, done on-site as well as in the studio, mostly from inspiration at the Hudson River's edge. (Through April 27)
Berkshire Collects @ Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield. Forty Berkshire County residents share their passionate pursuit of every imaginable kind of object, from rare motorcycles to wind-up toys, exotic insects, vintage guitars, antique toasters, Pez dispensers, and a host of other artifacts and memorabilia. (Through May 11)
Winter Light: Selections from the Collection of Thomas Clark @ The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls. A selection of approximately twenty winter landscape paintings including works by Aldro Thompson Hibbard, Hobart Nichols, Ernest Lawson, Arthur James Emery Powell, Arthur Clifton Goodwin and Walter Koeniger. (Through May 11)
Wendell Minor's America @ Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge. Award-winning illustrator Wendell Minor drew his way through childhood in Aurora, Illinois, inspired by America's heartland and the richly illustrated magazines that were so much a part of life at the time. Determined to forge a career as an artist, he sold his beloved 1955 Chevy to pursue his studies at the Ringling School of Art and Design in Florida, and moved to New York in 1968, with little more than his portfolio in hand. Since then, his striking visual narratives and elegant designs have appeared on nearly two thousand book covers and more than fifty children's books. This exhibition celebrates the artist's four-decade career,with more than 150 artworks gleaned from his expansive visual chronicles, and commentary reflecting on his collaborations with prominent authors, scientists, and historians.. (Through May 26)
One Work @ The Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs. A selection of large-scale artwork in the Tang collection that showcase a range of approaches to subject matter and media including painting, photography, sculpture, and installation. The artists include David Brooks, James Esber, Elger Esser, Anya Kielar, Julian LaVerdiere, Katy Schimert, Jonathan Seliger and Beverly Semmes. (Through June 1)
The Mystery of the Albany Mummies @ Albany Institute of History and Art. An investigation of two ancient Egyptian mummies and their coffins, one dating from the 21st Dynasty and the other from the Ptolemaic Period, acquired by the Institute in 1909. (Through June 8, 2014)
Anselm Kiefer @ MASS MoCA, North Adams. MASS MoCA opens a 10,000 square-foot building devoted to the art of Anselm Kiefer. The exhibition will include Étroits sont les Vaisseaux (Narrow are the Vessels), an 82-foot long, undulating wave-like sculpture made of cast concrete, exposed rebar, and lead; The Women of the Revolution (Les Femmes de la Revolution) , comprised of more than twenty lead beds with photographs and wall text; Velimir Chlebnikov , a steel pavilion containing 30 paintings dealing with nautical warfare and inspired by the quixotic theories of the Russian mathematical experimentalist Velimir Chlebnikov; and a new, large-format commission created by the artist specifically for the installation at MASS MoCA.


text:
TEXAS & P R CO v. CALLENDER(1902)
[183 U.S. 632, 633] Messrs. Arthur H. Masten and Rush Taggart for plaintiff in error.
Messrs. Treadwell Cleveland, George Richards, and Frederick E. Mygatt for defendants in error.
Mr. Justice Peckham delivered the opinion of the court:
This action was brought by the defendants in error, who are aliens, in the circuit court of the United States for the southern district of New York, to recover the value of 187 bales of cotton destroyed in the same fire at Westwego, Louisiana, November 12, 1894, mentioned in the immediately preceding case. As in that case, the defense here is based upon certain clauses of the bill of lading providing exemption from common- law liability in the contingencies mentioned. There was a verdict for the plaintiffs by the direction of the court, and the judgment entered thereon having been affirmed in the circuit court of appeals (39 C. C. A. 154, 98 Fed. 538), the railway company has brought the case here by writ of error.
The facts as to the manner of doing business at Westwego are the same as those stated in the foregoing case, and also in the Clayton Case, 173 U.S. 348 , 43 L. ed. 725, 19 Sup. Ct. Rep. 421. The cotton arrived at Westwego between October 17 and 29, and had been so placed on the pier that it was only necessary for the steamship company to send a ship there and take the cotton when pointed out to [183 U.S. 632, 634] its master or other officer. In this case there had been sent a notification to the steamship company, by means of the 'transfer sheets' mentioned in the statement of facts in the other case, of the arrival of the cotton as early as November 2, for most of it, and for a few bales as late as November 10. After the evidence was in, the defendant requested to go to the jury upon the question whether the cotton was awaiting further conveyance at the time of its destruction, and also upon the question of whether the cotton had been delivered to the steamship company, and also upon the whole case. The request was refused. The clauses of the bill of lading to which reference is made are the following:
The measure of the common-law liability between connecting carriers is stated in the opinion in the preceding case and the cases therein referred to, and need not be here repeated.
Now what is the true construction of the 4th clause? In relation to that it was stated by Judge Shipman, in delivering the opinion of the circuit court of appeals herein, as follows:
We think this view of the circuit court of appeals is the correct one, and that under the wording of the 4th clause in the bill of lading the defendant was properly held liable. The first part of that clause in terms takes cotton out of any clause on the subject of fire, and as if such language might possibly render it doubtful as to what the status of cotton would be by merely excepting it from any clause on the subject of fire contained in the bill of lading, it is further provided that 'the carrier shall be liable as at common law for loss or damage of cotton by fire.' The whole is a special and specific provision which applies to cotton alone and to the loss of cotton by fire. The other provisions apply generally to all property, whatever its character and wherever taken. In other words, these other clauses are of a general nature, while the 4th clause refers to cotton alone, and to the specific cause of the loss, viz., by fire. We are of opinion that the specific clause takes effect to the exclusion of the general clauses containing matters of general exemption, and that therefore the carrier remains liable as [183 U.S. 632, 637] at common law for a loss of cotton by fire while in the possession of the carrier, although it was ready for delivery to the next carrier within the meaning of the 3d clause, or was awaiting further conveyance within the meaning of the 11th clause; but that if it had been actually delivered before the loss, the railway company would not have been responsible therefor. The defendant's claim, if allowed, would leave the shipper without recourse for loss by fire after the notification had been given to the steamship company and before the delivery of the cotton had been made to it, because the railway company would be under no liability for the loss of the cotton by fire, excepting by reason of its own negligence, and the insurance of the cotton, while in the possession of the steamship company, would not attach, and so the shipper would be without any adequate protection during that time. True, he might obtain special insurance during this intermediate period, but it would add to the expense of the transit which under the terms of the bill he would naturally not feel called upon to make, and it would be inconvenient and troublesome to do it, and the court ought not to unduly limit the plain language of the clause for the purpose of thereby enabling the company to escape a liability cast upon it by the common law, and which it voluntarily assumed.
As cotton was the subject of the special provision, its language should be given full sway, and should not be curtailed by other provisions in other clauses of a general nature referring to all kinds of property.
We are also of opinion that there was nothing to go to the jury upon the question of a delivery of this cotton to the steamship company under the 12th clause of the bill of lading. It may be assumed that the pier of the railway company was the place understood and agreed upon between that company and the steamship company to make delivery, when it was made, of the cotton to be thereafter carried by the steamship company; but upon the uncontradicted evidence in this case we are of opinion that the simple arrival of the cotton at the pier, and notice thereof given to the steamship company by means of the 'transfer sheets' spoken of in the other case, did not in and [183 U.S. 632, 638] of itself amount to a delivery of the cotton to the steamship company, constructive or otherwise. Nor was it a delivery on the steamship's pier, as between the shipper and the railway company, within the language of clause 12, and for the reasons herein stated the notice to the steamship company did not relieve the railway carrier from liability.
The uncontradicted evidence shows that the cotton came to the railway pier under these circumstances: The pier was built by the railway company, and was in its sole and absolute control and possession. Not a bale of cotton could be taken from it without the action of that company; its own watchmen were in charge of the pier at all times, and when a steamship came to the pier it was only under a permit or an order from an officer of the railway company that the cotton was taken. It was pointed out by the servants of the railway company, and, within the custom of the port of New Orleans, it had to be brought within the reach of the ship's tackle before the ship was called upon to take it. The expression 'ship's tackle' means 'where the ship's ropes can get onto it so that the ship's winches can pull the cotton in.' The custom was that after a steamship company returned the transfer sheets which had been sent it by the railway company, an order was made out by the railway officials on the Westwego office of the defendant to deliver to the steamship company's agents such cotton as was ordered. It does not appear that any such order was given. Prior to the time of the arrival of the vessel which was to take the cotton and the arrival of the stevedores, the steamship company had no charge of any of the cotton on the pier. There was no particular spot on the pier at which, if cotton were there deposited, it was understood between defendant and the steamship companies to have been deposited in the care, control, or possession of any of such companies; but, on the contrary, the whole pier was covered by cotton destined indiscriminately for transportation to different European ports by different lines of steamers, not one of which could take a bale of cotton away without the order of the railway company.
Before the ship took the cotton it gave a mate's receipt for it, although sometimes the receipt would not come as soon as [183 U.S. 632, 639] that, and the cotton would be delivered before the receipt was given. The cotton which came in on the cars of the defendant was placed all along the pier, and that which was destined for any particular company had to be pointed out and selected from a large mass of cotton on the pier. The railway company had contracts with various steamship companies;-with the West India & Pacific, the French line, the lines for which Miller & Company were agents, the Hamburg-American line, and some others;-and the cotton for all these various lines was unloaded upon this pier of the railway company, and was distributed all over the wharf, so that when a steamship came to the dock upon which the cotton was, that which was intended for the particular steamship then at the pier would be brought out to it or within reach of its tackle by the railway employees, depending upon where the cotton was, and how far away from the ship; and it was understood between the steamship and railway companies that the railway company would get out the cotton when necessary to do it, and by getting out the cotton was meant dragging it from where it was stored on the wharf out in front or near enough in front to enable the steamship people to get it without having to go around through the bales of cotton.
The connection of the steamship companies with the transportation of the cotton was the subject of special contracts between those companies and the railway company. The initiation would be an agreement between a steamship company and the railway company for a certain charge for freight across the ocean for a stated amount of cotton from New Orleans to Liverpool or Bremen, or whatever other foreign port it might be, and no particular cotton was specified. Having obtained this agreement as to price and number of bales, the railway company would then agree with the shipper in Texas for a through rate from the point in Texas at which the cotton was to be taken to the port abroad, and it would then give a bill of lading such as was given in evidence in this case, providing for the through rate and the liabilities of the various carriers by rail and by sea; but it was only after an arrangement had been made and a contract entered into between the railway and a [183 U.S. 632, 640] steamship company that the latter company would send a steamer to the Westwego pier. The evidence is uncontradicted in regard to what the steamship lines had to do under the agreements they had with the defendant; in some cases they were not under any obligation to come to the pier unless the defendant had at least 1,500 or 2,000 bales of cotton ready for them, while in another case the steamship company which had a contract to take 20,000 bales of cotton from the railway company was not to be called on to go to the wharf unless there were at least 500 bales ready to deliver to it, and by the bill of lading the railway company might, under certain contingencies, if it deemed necessary, forward the cotton by some steamer of another line than that mentioned in the bill. The steamship companies took their own time in coming to the Westwego pier for the cotton. If they had no special contract with the railway company, they did not come at all. It was not the case of a regular delivery by the railway company to a connecting carrier at the pier of the latter.
Now upon these facts we regard it as entirely clear that at the time this cotton was lost there had been no delivery, actual or constructive, to the steamship company, so as to devest the defendant of its common-law liability for the loss of this cotton.
Within clause 12 of this bill of lading there was no delivery of the property by the defendant, either to the steamship, her master, agents, or servants, or to the steamship company, or on the steamship company's pier at the port of New Orleans, even upon the assumption that the pier at Westwego was the point agreed upon between the railway and the steamship companies, where the delivery of the cotton was to be made when it was delivered. How can it be said that there was a delivery to this steamship company upon the facts above detailed when, by agreement between the parties, the company was not to take the property until it sent a steamship to the pier for that purpose? Until it was delivered to it at the steamer's side the steamer had neither possession nor control over it. By the bill of lading the defendant could in certain contingencies, and at any time before delivery to the ship, send the cotton by another [183 U.S. 632, 641] steamer. Until the ship did come to the pier, there can be no question of actual delivery in this case.
Nor does the notification to the steamship company that there was cotton at the pier awaiting or ready for delivery to it make such notification a constructive delivery of the cotton, and terminate the liability of the railway company. Here was a pier containing thousands of bales of cotton, destined to various European ports, and by various lines of steamers, with a special right to the railway company, mentioned in clause 11, to send the cotton mentioned in any particular bill of lading by a steamer of a line other than the one mentioned in the bill, and no obligation of the steamship company to send for the cotton until there was a quantity of 500 bales in some cases, and in others until there were from 1,500 to 2,000 bales ready for the particular steamer. A notification to a steamship company by means of a 'transfer sheet,' which was taken to be a notice that there was cotton at the pier ready for delivery to a steamer when it came, did not necessarily take away the right of the railway company to send that cotton by another steamer, and the company which was notified and sent a steamer would have no ground of complaint if, upon the arrival of the steamer at the pier, other cotton consigned to the same port were given it to the same amount. There being only this conditional obligation to send for cotton on the part of the steamship company, and none upon the part of the defendant to at all events deliver the specified cotton to the former, and the steamship company not having sent a ship to the pier, there was no limitation of the defendant's liability wrought by the notification.
Whatever may generally be the effect of a notice to a connecting carrier, upon the question of terminating or altering the liability of a preceding carrier for the goods, it is quite clear that it has no effect in diminishing the liability until actual delivery in a case where the preceding carrier still continues to have full control over the goods and has a choice as between connecting carriers, and may, notwithstanding such general notice, deliver the goods under certain circumstances to another [183 U.S. 632, 642] carrier for further transportation. Until actual delivery in such case, the preceding carrier is not devested of his liability.
The case of Pratt v. Grand Trunk R. Co. 95 U.S. 43 , 24 L. ed. 336, and the other cases referred to by counsel in his argument at the bar, have no application in the view we take of the facts. The Pratt Case was fully commented upon in Texas & P. R. Co. v. Clayton, 173 U.S. 348 , 43 L. ed. 725, 19 Sup. Ct. Rep. 421, in the course of the opinion of the court and it seems to be too clear for argument that the case does not justify an inference that the facts which we have just detailed in regard to this cotton constitute a delivery, either constructive or actual, to the steamship company, or to the pier of that company.
We are therefore of opinion that the court below did not err in directing a verdict for the plaintiffs for the value of the cotton, and the judgment in their favor is affirmed.


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Standard Chartered remains committed to Islamic banking and expects growth in its core markets, a spokesman for the lender said on Sunday, after the head of its Islamic arm departed.
Afaq Khan left Standard Chartered Saadiq, the lender's global Islamic banking business, after 12 years with the Asia-focused bank to take a career break, the spokesman said. A successor will be announced in due course, he added.
His departure follows the naming of the group's new chief executive, Bill Winters, who is expected to oversee a shakeup when he takes over in June in a bid to reverse a two-year slump.
"Standard Chartered remains committed to our Islamic banking business, and we continue to position ourselves for further growth in the core markets where the largest Islamic banking opportunities exist," the spokesman said.
The core markets include Bahrain, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates, where Standard Chartered offers personal banking services, the spokesman said.
The bank also offers structured finance for businesses in Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Turkey, the United States, Brunei, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Indonesia, Pakistan, Singapore and the United Kingdom, according to the Standard Chartered Saadiq website.
The bank arranged $20 billion in Islamic financing for its customers in 2013, a rise of $3 billion from 2012, according to its 2013 annual report, the latest available.
But Standard Chartered is scaling down parts of its global business under a cost-cutting drive. In January, it announced plans to shut its global equities business and axe 4,000 jobs in retail banking.
Competition is intense in Islamic banking, especially in the Gulf where a number of cash-rich local lenders operate.
HSBC, another British bank, announced in 2012 that except for wholesale banking operations, it would no longer offer Islamic products in Britain, the UAE, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Singapore and Mauritius.
Khan is the second senior figure to depart from Standard Chartered Saadiq. Wasim Saifi, global head of Islamic retail clients, left the bank late last year. He was also the chief executive of Standard Chartered Saadiq, Malaysia.
(Reuters / 29 March 2015)---
Alfalah Consulting - Kuala Lumpur: www.alfalahconsulting.com
Consultant-Speaker-Motivator: www.ahmad-sanusi-husain.com
Islamic Investment Malaysia: www.islamic-invest-malaysia.com


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