If you have any interest in animals that aren’t humans, it is easy to find yourself sympathising with Rex Harrison as he struggles to communicate with a pushmi-pullyu in the 1967 film of Doctor Dolittle, then singing along as he dreams of not only talking to the creatures in his menagerie (“grunt and squeak and squawk with the animals”) but having them answer back.

As soon as our own species stepped away from the teeming continuum of the surrounding world, we started talking to its variousness and began trying to deduce what other species might be saying. For more than 30,000 years, from the first known cave paintings of lions and wild horses, to the most recent “sci-art” works featuring transgenic organisms, the multifarious histories of our attempted conversations with nature have had one thing in common. All describe our separation from it, and at the same time our attempts to bridge the gap. Our talking to the animals has mostly been one-sided, domineering at times, cloth-eared at others and frequently plain wrong, but it continues, richly reflecting our evolving beliefs about the 8.7m or so other species on Earth.

Orpheus had a similar project to Dr Doolittle. His singing in Ancient Greece was said to be so charming that animals and plants gathered to listen. But what happened next? The stilling of the wild was the thing; what the lion or the dandelion made of what they’d heard isn’t recorded. Nor could it be. If a lion could talk, Wittgenstein advised, we wouldn’t be able to understand it. The outward-facing openness of animals’ looks, as described by the Orpheus-infatuated poet Rilke (and taken up by Heidegger and others including John Berger in his Why Look at Animals?), is closed to us.

How, in the absence of any intelligible crosstalk, we have scientifically and imaginatively processed the planet’s other occupants is the concern of the Wellcome Collection’s exhibition Making Nature. The show’s curator, Honor Beddard (working with natural history consultant Jack Ashby), has brought together more than a hundred objects from literature, film, taxidermy and photography and organised them in four sections: Ordering (mostly about taxonomy and systematics from Linnaeus onwards), Displaying (about museums and collecting specimens), Observing (animals and their capture in zoos), and Making (about genetic manipulation, artificial selection and the unstoppable urge humans have to interfere with all levels of life).

Included here are world consciousness-altering enterprises, such as a first edition of Linnaeus’s whole Earth catalogue, the Systema Naturae, from 1735. But there are also telling jokes, such as the fake apeman that the maverick naturalist Charles Waterton assembled around 1825. Nearby are first-time groupings of specimens and artefacts: various remains of Count Raggi’s birds of paradise, with an intact body (a study skin) put alongside another with its feet and wings removed (looking like a flaming carrot, it perplexed early European curio-hunters who deduced the bird lived without touching the Earth); there are also the feathers of other birds fashioned around 1910 into a chic Parisian hat at the height of the plume boom, and other feathers from birds slaughtered on their home ground in the 19th century to make a headdress for a Torres Strait Islander. Here too are freshly incarnated dreams: a selection from the Pittsburgh Center for PostNatural History of various organisms that have been intentionally altered by humans, including dried and preserved E coli bacteria assembled in an acrylic block to spell out the words “Hello World”.

In the biblical account of creation, the separation of humans from other animals needed to be asserted. Adam was given an Eden project of his own: the job of naming every beast of the field, every fowl of the air: “Whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.” “Naming the Animals”, a poem by Anthony Hecht, develops the story. Adam, new – understandably – to the game, is bewildered by his task. Shyly addressing a cow, he ventures to call it Fred.

Fred the cow and Adam’s efforts underline the paradoxical effect of naming nature. Organising the world with words, representations or manmade symbols brings wildlife closer to us. Differentiating every hummingbird in the Americas by a scientific and a common name raises each hectic blur of metallic colour into a humanly graspable object: the birds exist and now we know them to exist. To know that there are 340 species of hummingbirds, where once there were thought to be just 20, enlarges both our perception of biodiversity and our minds. But, as we discover quite how profuse life is, we also learn that each bundle of feathers most likely cares little for our taxonomical attentions. Naming gives us some purchase, but it also teaches that nothing in nature is for sale, that nothing beyond us – animal, vegetable or mineral – can be truly ours to have. We are having to learn to read over and over again as we discover more and more species; our naming, therefore, can only be a holding measure, the truth for now.

Naming gives us some purchase, but it also teaches that nothing beyond us – animal, vegetable, mineral – is ours to have

Look out of your window and think how every blackbird you might see is unaware it is a blackbird, not one tree cares whether it is an oak, an ash or a lime. And yet the blackbird lives as a blackbird, not as a blackcap; the ash is an ash and not an alder. We are right to tell the difference because the difference is telling. And this truth is imaginatively stimulating as well as intellectually invigorating. How much better to know that, instead of generic little brown things flying away from us, there are rock pipits and water pipits and tree pipits and meadow pipits. What a good day it was when Gilbert White’s repeated walks around his parish at Selborne in Hampshire in the 1770s prompted him to realise that there wasn’t just one but three kinds of leaf‑green warblers among the spring leaves: chiffchaffs, willow warblers and wood warblers.

Careful-looking lies behind this enlarging of life. Our species has been doing this for a long time: one of the wonders of cave paintings is the accuracy of their depictions. We may not know whether the lions or the horses represent a shopping list, or a field note, or a frieze of totemic animals to inspire shamanic dreaming, but we can immediately recognise precisely what the creatures are. They are named in ochre. Such diligent attention to the real and translations from it have remained a human trait ever since, throughout art and science history. One of my favourite stories about Charles Darwin has his son asking another boy, “Where does your father do his barnacles?”, assuming all dads were like his: organising geniuses intent on peering down microscopes and infatuated with life in all its forms.

Not everyone would agree. Some think naming is a quasi-colonial action, a possessive anthropo-something grab after other species; some think that attempts to organise life and to understand it lose sight of its deeper truth and dilute its organic magic. The early 19th-century poet John Clare was an extraordinary field naturalist. His poems and prose writings comprise a remarkable 65 first bird records for his home county of Northamptonshire. Their names brightly mark all of his writing but he was hostile to the idea of scientific study: “I love,” he wrote, “to see the nightingale in its hazel retreat and the cuckoo hiding in its solitude of oaken foliage and not to examine their carcasses in glass cases.” Another poet, William Blake, was furious with Isaac Newton for, as he put it, unweaving the rainbow.

Let me try to convince the doubters. In the last few years the DNA of the large gulls of the northern hemisphere has been scrutinised. What I grew up thinking were herring gulls and lesser black-backed gulls have been closely studied. These two species had populations all around the planet that more or less merged with one another in a continuous grey and white flight of feathers. Geographical races or subspecies were known, usually defined by having separate breeding colonies every thousand kilometres or so. But “herring gull” was what I’d call any bird like it that I saw in the Mediterranean, or the Black Sea, or off the west coast of Ireland, as well as on my local reservoir, where I’d been birdwatching since I was a child. It was the same for the lesser black-backed gull. Then suddenly – for me at least – the two species became about 10. The herring gull survives but what were previously thought of as subspecies have been promoted to species. There are new birds to twitch: Caspian gulls and yellow-legged gulls moving north and west from their breeding grounds, and American herring gulls and Azorean gulls displaced around the Atlantic.

The birds themselves haven’t changed. They are as they were before the ornithological journals published papers splitting the species apart. My eyes are the same, too – straining through lenses and watering in cold winds and frosty dusks. But what is now known has changed everything: the gull world has got larger. There seems to be more life on the planet. That must be a good thing.

It is, of course, a question of terms. But, language being what our thinking lives by, these new terms have gone in deep. Taxonomy is an unfashionable discipline in the sciences today but should be valued as a key building block for understanding biological processes. All understanding of the species interactions on which life depends relies on knowing what a species is, even if the boundaries, as declared by us, are arbitrary, and nature doesn’t care where one species ends and another begins.

I said just now that it is my way of seeing that has changed, not the gulls themselves. But that isn’t quite true. Contemplating the findings and decisions of taxonomists and other organisers of the wild is a good way to keep fresh in our minds the fact that evolution is far from finished. The process did not come to an end when Darwin and those other bearded Victorians described it in the 19th century. Nothing is fixed in the world of the gulls of Britain, nor of any life on the planet. We are living our own evolution. It is as relentless as ever. And the extraordinary collection of texts and illustrations and artefacts and skins in Making Nature show how our single species has grown up – enamoured and provoked, troubled and fascinated – as we have tried to work out what on Earth is going on.

• Making Nature is at the Wellcome Collection from 1 December. wellcomecollection.org. Tim Dee has written an introduction to the accompanying book Animal Vegetable Mineral.

Summary: From wild cats to catalogues to a fake apeman, a new show at the Wellcome Collection explores our attempts to explain the natural world


In November 2001, as the militiamen of the Northern Alliance were preparing to assault an Afghan city that remained under Taliban control, the militia’s commander, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, phoned an urgent request to the U.S. general in charge of the air campaign. Gen. Dostum explained to his American counterpart, Maj. Gen. David Deptula, that a Taliban leader in the city had just called him to boast that he had put his headquarters in Gen. Dostum’s own house. “You should bomb my house immediately,” Gen. Dostum said. “It’s the only house within miles with a swimming pool and tennis court.”

In a few minutes’ time, Gen. Deptula obtained overhead imagery of the house and ordered a B-1 bomber to drop two precision-guided bombs on it. But then the staff at U.S. Central Command intervened, putting the strike on hold until it could verify the target. Geospatial intelligence personnel faxed a satellite photo of the house to Uzbekistan, from which the photo was flown by helicopter into Afghanistan, where a Special Forces soldier carried it on horseback to Gen. Dostum. By then, of course, the Taliban leader had left. “If you want to bomb my house, go ahead,” Gen. Dostum informed Gen. Deptula. “But there is no one there anymore.”

This episode is one of many in James Kitfield ’s “Twilight Warriors” that will be new to observers of America’s wars against Islamic extremism. Mr. Kitfield, a veteran national-security reporter whose earlier book, “Prodigal Soldiers” (1997), deftly narrated the U.S. military’s revitalization after Vietnam, here provides an enlightening tour of 21st-century counterterrorism—its successes and failures, its evolving technologies, and its ever-festering rivalries among national-security agencies. Along with voyaging through the Greater Middle East, he covers parts of Africa and Latin America, where U.S. agencies have combated terrorists and drug traffickers.

Unlike many such accounts, “Twilight Warriors” does not dwell on Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama or their cabinet officials. Rather it focuses on the leaders at the next level down—those who prosecuted the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and other distant lands. Some of these individuals, like Gens. David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal, are nearly household names, owing to their battlefield accomplishments. Two who are less familiar—Gen. Martin Dempsey and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn —are presented more fully than before through Mr. Kitfield’s expansive interviews. Both are shown to be leaders who routinely overcame bureaucratic parochialism and hidebound thinking.

The figure who is least known to the public is Brian McCauley, whose agency—the FBI, where he rose to become deputy assistant director—has played the least-heralded role in overseas counterterrorism operations. Few Americans, indeed, had ever heard of Mr. McCauley until two weeks ago, when news organizations publicized his assertion that he had rebuffed a State Department request to reclassify a Benghazi email so that it was “never to be seen again.”

Mr. Kitfield traces FBI counterterrorism from the late 1990s, a period when the FBI and CIA strenuously resisted cooperation. “Whenever the two agencies were forced to work together . . . ,” Mr. Kitfield says, “CIA and FBI agents clashed openly and often, with the former playing to type as tweedy Georgetown intellectuals, and the FBI agents coming across as blue-collar beat cops.” Even after 9/11 the tensions remained. The FBI sent its expert interrogators to question terrorist suspects who had been detained abroad, but they were elbowed aside by the CIA, which insisted on “enhanced interrogation techniques” that the FBI judged to be ineffective.

Mr. Kitfield explains how Mr. McCauley cultivated personal contacts at his foreign postings to break down barriers between agencies. He expanded the FBI presence in Afghanistan from a handful of agents to more than 100 to track down insurgent suicide-bomb cells. By demonstrating the value of the FBI’s technologies and techniques, he persuaded skeptical Special Forces soldiers to lend a hand with security.

While “Twilight Warriors” is filled with success stories, it also illuminates shortcomings and setbacks. In one instance, Mr. McCauley looked into a senior Afghan official after noticing that he was reaching the site of every terrorist bombing before anyone else. Mr. McCauley learned that the man controlled the ramp at Kabul airport, where opium was exported and that he was meeting with Pakistani intelligence figures. But the FBI never gathered enough information to bring charges against him.

Other failures were self-inflicted. The Obama administration chose to rely on surgical strikes against enemy leaders as its principal counterterrorism tool despite opposition from top experts. “In the wrong circumstances targeted killings were like a narcotic,” Mr. Kitfield writes, summarizing Gen. McChrystal’s views, “lulling decision makers into a false sense of accomplishment where showy gestures were confused with solving root problems.”

According to Mr. Kitfield, veteran counterterrorist officials concluded in 2012 that the Obama administration was seeking to suppress intelligence on Islamic extremist threats in order to justify walking away from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and other countries that had fallen apart on his watch. Several senior intelligence officials, he reveals, objected vociferously when the National Intelligence Council drafted an estimate asserting that al Qaeda no longer posed a threat to the United States. The uproar compelled the council to withdraw the assertion.

Many of these officials have since moved out of government. From the sidelines, they have watched the Obama administration’s retrenchment from international affairs with sorrow and dismay. “The brotherhood of soldiers, spies, and special agents,” writes Mr. Kitfield, has come to realize that “the administration had confused walking away from a fight with ending one.”

Mr. Moyar is director of the Center for Military and Diplomatic History at the Foreign Policy Initiative.

Summary: Mark Moyar reviews “Twilight Warriors: The Soldiers, Spies, and Special Agents Who Are Revolutionizing the American Way of War” by James Kitfield.


Donald Trump was supposed to take over the Republican Party, but the question going forward will be whether the Republican Party takes over him.

So far, the early legislative agenda of Republicans after the Trump revolution is shaping up to be exactly what you would’ve expected prior to the Trump revolution. It’s a cookie-cutter GOP program that any Republican who ran for president in the past 40 years would feel comfortable signing, with its prospective centerpiece another round of across-the-board tax cuts.

It’s not that Trump didn’t campaign on all of this over the past year. His candidacy combined utterly conventional Republican positions with a few signature policy heterodoxies and a flame-throwing populist message. If it’s comforting that he doesn’t seem intent on going to war with his own party in Washington, the opposite risk is that he loses some of his political distinctiveness in the grinding legislative wars to come.

This is why the Democratic approach to Trump so far, besides being insane, is wrongheaded. The Democrats are preparing to fight what they consider a kleptocratic handmaiden of Vladimir Putin in the Oval Office, an unprecedented threat to the American republic that justifies cockamamie schemes like calling for the Electoral College to ignore the results of the election.

There is no doubt that Trump is unlike any prior president. But if Democrats begin thinking and acting a little more rationally, they will in all likelihood find their opposition to Trump running in a reassuringly familiar rut — Republicans are heartless tools of corporations and the wealthy. They don’t care if people lose their health insurance. They are cutting taxes for the rich. They are deregulating bankers. Etc., etc.

This is the critique that Hillary Clinton didn’t make of Trump, opting instead to emphasize his outlandishness and try to separate him from his party. In this vein, liberals are now resisting “normalizing” Trump, when they should be perfectly content to normalize him — specifically, to make him a normal Republican.

It’s possible to see the case already building. The candidate who issued thunderous jeremiads during the final weeks of the campaign against a globalized elite that had literally stolen from small-town America has assembled a cabinet that by and large could have been put together by Ted Cruz — or, for that matter, Mitt Romney.

Then there’s the congressional agenda. The early indications are that Republicans will pass a partial repeal of ObamaCare out of the gate that could further destabilize the law’s rickety exchanges and lead to people losing their insurance.

Congressional Republicans tell themselves that they can blame the misconceived law itself for any negative fallout, but this will be a hard sell. For the first time in the course of the long ObamaCare debate, they will be the ones responsible for disruption in the health care market.

Next, congressional Republicans want to move on to large-scale tax reform. The starting point will likely be House Speaker Paul Ryan’s already well-developed plan for across-the-board income tax cuts and a lower corporate tax rate. For all its merit, Ryan’s reform could’ve been incubated by any conservative think tank before anyone imagined Trump might run for president, let alone win.

What’s the point in having a populist Republican in the White House if congressional Republicans can’t find a way to couple some replacement measures with their ObamaCare repeal to give people other options for getting health insurance?

Trump actually talked of “taking care of everybody” when he was asked about health care during the campaign. That will be thrown back at him like President Obama’s promise that you can keep your plan if you like your plan.

Or if congressional Republicans can’t make their tax plan more oriented toward the middle class, perhaps including a cut in payroll taxes?

All of this is subject to change, and Trump can potentially blow up the best-laid plans of congressional Republicans with one tweet or a swipe in a TV interview or at a rally. Of course, Trump will be heard from on infrastructure, trade and immigration, where he is in a different place than much of his party.

Neither wing of the GOP may like it, but the Reaganites and the populists are now in an uneasy alliance. It behooves the champions of a highly traditional Republican platform to think about what Trump’s victory means and to be more mindful than in the past of the interests of working-class voters.

And it behooves Trump the firebrand to consider the responsibilities of governing (as he has by, for instance, jettisoning the crowd-pleasing call to lock up Clinton).

There is a balance to be struck. The Republican establishment may welcome a more “normal” Trump, but so, in the end, will Democrats.

Summary: Donald Trump was supposed to take over the Republican Party, but the question going forward will be whether the Republican Party takes over him. So far, the early legislative agenda of Republicans …


When Kanye West arrived at Trump Tower to meet with President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday morning, it was the latest in a dramatic series of events that has put stress on his relationship with wife Kim Kardashian West.

But a source close to the couple tells PEOPLE exclusively that their political differences are the least of their worries. “That’s so far down the list of what they’re dealing with at this point,” says the source. “Lots of couples have political differences; that’s not a deal breaker. They’re dealing with much more important things than who each of them supported for President.” However, an insider adds that the reality star “currently has no imminent plans to file for divorce.”

The source tells PEOPLE that there have been several stressors in the marriage. West, 39, was only recently discharged from the hospital where he spent over a week being treated for exhaustion. The rapper’s hospitalization came less than two months after Kardashian West’s own traumatic experience, in which she was robbed at gunpoint and had millions of dollars worth of jewelry stolen from her in Paris.

The dueling crises have taken a toll on their marriage. “Kim needed him after the robbery,” says the source. “She needed her husband. But that was the beginning of his issues, so he wasn’t there for her like he probably should have been. So Kim was trying to be supportive of him, but she needed his support at that time.”

“She had to be the stronger one,” the source continues, noting that she was trying to give some normalcy to the couple’s two children, North, 3½, and Saint, 1. “She was going through a lot. And you know that the Kardashians are very close and very supportive of each other, and they got her through it, but there are times where a wife needs her husband.”

RELATED VIDEO: Kanye West Resurfaces as a Blond Following Hospitalization

As the couple is navigating the rough waters, people in their inner circle are encouraging the couple to keep working on the marriage. “We’re telling them to hold on, to get through this,” says the source. “They both need to understand that adversity is what will make them stronger as a couple.”

Those close to the couple believe that some good can come from the latest challenges. “If they can get through this season, they will create an unbreakable bond,” says the source. “If anyone can do it, they can.”

Summary: The couple’s inner circle is encouraging the couple to work through their issues


Cyberattacks targeting a little-known internet infrastructure company, Dyn, disrupted access to dozens of websites Friday, preventing some users from accessing PayPal, Twitter and Spotify.

Dyn, whose customers include some of the world’s most widely visited websites, said it did not know who was responsible for the outages that began in the Eastern United States, and then spread to other parts of the country and overseas.

The outages were intermittent, making it difficult to identify all the victims. But technology news site Gizmodo named some five dozen sites that were affected by the attack. They included CNN, HBO Now, Mashable, the New York Times, People.com, the Wall Street Journal and Yelp.

Dyn said attacks were coming from tens of millions of internet-connected devices — such as webcams, printers and thermostats — infected with malicious software that turns them into “bots” that can be used in massive distributed denial of service attacks.

The US Department of Homeland Security last week issued a warning about this powerful new approach, noting it was concerned about the potential for new attacks after code for malware used in these attacks was published on the internet.

Dyn said late Friday that it was fighting the third major wave of attacks, which were being launched from locations spread across the globe, making them harder to fight.

“The complexity of the attacks is what’s making it very challenging for us,” said Dyn’s chief strategy officer, Kyle York.

The US Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said they were investigating.

The disruptions come at a time of unprecedented fears about the cyberthreat in the United States, where hackers have breached political organizations and election agencies.

Dyn said it had resolved one morning attack, which disrupted operations for about two hours, but disclosed a second a few hours later that was causing further disruptions.

Dyn said early Friday that the outage was limited to the Eastern United States. Amazon later reported that the issue was affecting users in Western Europe. Twitter and some news sites could not be accessed by some users in London late Friday.

PayPal Holdings Inc. said that the outage prevented some customers in “certain regions” from making payments. It apologized to customers for the inconvenience and said its networks had not been hacked.

Amazon Inc.’s web services division, one of the world’s biggest cloud computing companies, also reported a related outage, which it said was resolved early Friday afternoon.

Dyn is a Manchester, New Hampshire-based provider of services for managing domain name servers (DNS), which act as switchboards connecting internet traffic. Requests to access sites are transmitted through DNS servers that direct them to computers that host websites.

Dyn said it was still trying to determine how the attack led to the outage but that its first priority was restoring service.

Attacking a large DNS provider can create massive disruptions because such firms are responsible for forwarding large volumes of internet traffic.

Summary: Cyberattacks targeting a little-known internet infrastructure company, Dyn, disrupted access to dozens of websites Friday, preventing some users from accessing PayPal, Twitter and Spotify. Dyn, who…


By ISAAC GUZMAN and TRACY CONNOR DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Friday, June 7th 2002, 1:80AM

Dee Dee Ramone, the punk misfit from Queens who helped launch the Ramones and then quit to become a rapper, was found dead in his Hollywood home of a possible drug overdose, authorities said.

The 49-year-old musician died three months after being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a year after ex-bandmate Joey Ramone lost his life to cancer.

Dee Dee's wife, Barbara, found him dead on their couch when she returned home late Wednesday.

"The investigator noted drug paraphernalia, including a single syringe on the kitchen counter, and we are handling it as a possible accidental overdose," said Craig Harvey of the Los Angeles coroner's office.

In The Ramones' heyday, Dee Dee's lifestyle was as fast and furious as the band's three-chord riffs, and he struggled with heroin and alcohol addiction. In an interview two years ago, he said he was clean.

"I'm really lucky I'm still around. Everybody expected me to die next," he said. "Now things haven't been going good for a long time . . . but at least I haven't shot any dope over it."

In the winter 2001 issue of his Web 'zine, called Takin Dope, he said he was despondent about the deaths of his father and Joey.

Dee Dee Ramone was born Douglas Glenn Colvin but changed his last name after teaming up with fellow outcasts from Forest Hills to form a band in 1974.

The group became punk pioneers with teen-angst tunes such as "I Wanna Be Sedated" and "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue." Dee Dee was the bassist and a songwriter whose contributions included "Chinese Rock."

Jim Bessman, author of "Ramones: An American Band," said Dee Dee lived the life he sang about.

"None of them really lived it or died it the way Dee Dee did," Bessman said. "What is essentially one the most recognizable bits in rock and roll history was Dee Dee yelling out '1, 2, 3, 4' before every song. . . . That was as much a trademark of the Ramones sound as anything else."

He split from the band in 1989 and recorded a solo rap album under the name Dee Dee King, but continued to write for the Ramones until their 1996 breakup.

In recent years, he toured with his wife, wrote the memoir "Lobotomy: Surviving the Ramones," penned the macabre novel "Chelsea Horror Hotel" and painted.


Monday, October 7th 1996, 2:01AM

LIA WILLIAMS MUST HAVE THE CLEANEST hair on Broadway since Mary Martin in "South Pacific." Every night in "Skylight" twice on matinee days she takes a bath and washes her hair.

Not onstage, however. The tub is not in the part of her London flat that's seen in the play, but when the doorbell rings and she answers it, she's just come from it, dressed in a robe with a towel covering her wet head.

"It's a proper bath all right," the long-haired, blond Brit explained. "All plumbed in and all. And I have to strip down and get my hair all wet. Do it fast, too, so I can make the next scene."

She's making more than a splash in a bathtub these days. "Skylight," which arrived last month at the Royale Theater, is one of the hottest tickets around and it's not even one of those glitzy musicals. It's funny and it's sad and provocative, a story of two quite different people who once were lovers, trying to rekindle the flame after being apart for three years. And Williams, making her Broadway debut, was unanimously praised by the critics. Both she and Gambon know these roles well by now they were in the show in London for 12 weeks.

Her "Skylight" co-star is the formidable English actor Michael Gambon. He has a long and impressive list of credits on the British stage, as does Williams, but this play, by David Hare, is the first time for both of them on Broadway.

His reputation, however, is considerably longer than hers he had the leading role in the BBC production of "The Singing Detective," which was a big success on public television. So, was she intimidated taking a role in which she has to hold her own against him?

"Intimidated?" she answered. "How about terrified? He was my hero. He gave the most fantastic performance in a play called 'Man of the Moment.' It was absolutely brilliant. I remember the first day I walked into the rehearsal room, all I could see was this little person huddled inside a cloud of smoke.

"Then the little person stood up and up and up and a hand reached out from the cloud and a voice said, 'Pleased to meet you.' From then on, we got along fine. The play is scary you feel like you're walking on razor blades. It has to be the biggest test of raw nerves that either of us had ever experienced."

"You know, this is my first time ever being in the United States, first time ever being in New York, and I'm loving it. But then, my greatest wish has always been to appear on Broadway. Doing this play is a dream-wish fulfillment."

Her 6-year-old son, Joshua, loves New York, too. Particularly on Saturdays when, during matinee performances, he gets to play with Patti LuPone's son. LuPone is next door to Williams in "Master Class."

"I wouldn't mind staying in this city, but I would have to think about Joshua's schooling," says Williams. "It's a big city, and I thought I'd be homesick, but I did feel instantly at home here. It's a wonderful place; the energy is so exciting. I've never experienced anything like it."

Summary: LIA WILLIAMS MUST HAVE THE CLEANEST hair on Broadway since Mary Martin in "South Pacific."Every night in "Skylight"twice on matinee days she takes a bath and washes her hair. Not onstage, however. The tub is not in the part of her London flat that's seen in the play, but when the doorbell rings and she answers it, she's just come from it, dressed in a robe with a towel covering her wet


BY GEORGE RUSH AND JOANNA MOLLOY with Baird Jones

Friday, February 14th 1997, 2:01AM

James Brown ought to be singing "I Feel Bad" today. The so-called Godfather of Soul was AWOL Tuesday night for the Muhammad Ali benefit for starving refugees in Zaire at which B.B. King, the Fugees, Zelma Davis, and rappers Busta Rhymes and Q-Tip performed to a packed Radio City house for free.

A source associated with the event, where Oscar-nominated producers Leon Gast and David Sonenberg premiered the documentary "When We Were Kings," told The News that Brown demanded $50,000 for hotel and transportation for him and his ba nd alone.

"He demanded a presidential suite with two marble bathrooms, and a white or black Lincoln or Cadillac limousine, 1995 or better," said the source.

Brown also demanded a $12,500 fee to sing just one song "Funky Good Time" while all the other performers waived their fees. The event's organizers reluctantly agreed to some of Brown's demands, and his manager, Lisa Ross, signed a contract, and the performer's name was used in all the advertising.

But six days before showtime, says a source, Brown contacted producer Scot McCracken and demanded to be paid $75,000, a source claims.

"B.B. King, he canceled a paying gig in San Diego to come," said the source. "He's in his 70s, and he drove two hours to some dinky airport and changed planes to get here by 10 p.m. the night before. Then he rehearsed till 1:30 a.m."

Brown's spokesman, Larry Friday, claimed, "He was not contracted to perform or appear."

It's not known whether Ali was offended, but Brown had better do a reality check. Not one ticket-buyer complained to Radio City about his absence.

Christopher Reeve continues to amaze. When the disabled actor was met by a subdued audience Wednesday at a sneak-peek of his wrenching new HBO NYC movie, which airs in April, no one spoke for an awkward minute. So Reeve started cracking jokes.

"When I used to do the `Superman' movies, I used to get into everything, checking out the lighting, the sound, the editing," Reeve said. "Recently I told the producer that I was directing now. He said, `So what else is new?"'

"In the Gloaming," Reeve's directorial debut with Glenn Close, Whoopi Goldberg, Robert Sean Leonard, Bridget Fonda and David Strathairn, is a story of a young man with AIDS coming home to his wealthy but unhappy parents, and the emotional healing that happens among them. In an inspired move, HBO's Colin Callender and producer Fred Zollo asked Reeve to lens the flick, based on Alice Elliott Dark's story in The New Yorker. But there were adjustments to be made.

"The sound of my vent would ruin the soundtrack," said Reeve. "So I stayed in a different room with a two-way speaker. There was a video assist on my viewfinder, and I can see the shots and adjust them as they're being shot. It's amazing. I think one day Steven Spielberg will stay at his house in East Hampton and direct actors in California."

The process was not without its frustrations, Reeve allowed. "There was a scene where I wanted Glenn and Robert to sit on a bench a certain way. It took me 20 minutes to explain it. If I could've stood up, I could've shown them in one minute."

But there are pluses for actors, too, not the least of which is that Reeve, an actor, respects their craft. "And I'm not in a position to storm around and rant and rave and carry on," said Reeve. "That energy level makes for a relaxed set." Speaking of Leonard's character, Reeve said, "This man already knows he's not going to live. I said to him, `The key thing is acceptance. This character is somebody you really respect and somebody you really admire for his courage."'

The amplified sound of Reeve's breathing apparatus filled the room. He could have been talking about himself.

Mick Jagger is said to be trying to talk his fellow Rolling Stones into offering stock in the group. Jagger, who went to the London School of Economics, was obviously impressed by the $55 million that David Bowie's bond offering raked in last week ...

Alan King gets sentimental at the Concord this weekend. Four couples who honeymooned at the Catskills resort 50 years ago will hear King perform, just as he did a half-century ago.

Jack Klugman has been sued by a woman who says he put her "out to pasture" because she developed bad knees. Barbara Neugass charges that after she and the 74-year-old actor lived together for 18 years, Klugman breached an oral agreement to support her. Now she wants half his property. Klugman's people had no comment ...

Hustler publisher Larry Flynt got to like Czech director Milos Forman so much while filming "The People Vs. ..." that Flynt now plans to give the people of the Czech Republic their own version of Hustler magazine, according to mail-order king Michael Salem. This, even though Forman still finds Hustler "tasteless, vulgar and brutal" ..

With friends like former Mayor Ed Koch, who needs enemies? Koch had been saying all along that David Dinkins would not run for mayor again. Minutes before Dinkins' no-go announcement on his WLIB radio show, Koch was telling listeners to his own WABC radio program: "I like David Dinkins. I think he was a terrible mayor and I've said that many times. And I still like him." ...

Hot weekend in Miami Beach. Artist Romero Britto throws a party Sunday at his gallery celebrating Pat Swift and the fifth anniversary of her Plus Models/Swift Kids agency.

Summary: James Brown ought to be singing "I Feel Bad"today. The so-called Godfather of Soul was AWOL Tuesday night for the Muhammad Ali benefit for starving refugees in Zaire at which B.B. King, the Fugees, Zelma Davis, and rappers Busta Rhymes and Q-Tip performed to a packed Radio City house for free. A source associated with the event, where Oscar-nominated producers Leon Gast and David Sonenberg premiered the documentary "When We Were Kings,"told The


One week has made a significant difference in the lives of the four children featured in Diane Sawyer's special, "A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains."

Viewers have reached out to help, from left, Courtney, Shawn and Erica, three children featured in Diane Sawyer's special, "A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains."

CLICK HERE for the complete list of charities and CLICK HERE to watch the full show.

Shawn, the 18-year-old football player from Flat Gap, Ky., who believed he had to move away from home to keep his dreams on track, received scholarship offers from three local universities. He's chosen the respected Union College, the school he has always wanted to attend. His dorm room is ready, and he starts classes on Monday. He's also received several employment offers, ranging from coal mining to a position at UPS to a management training job at a supermarket in New York. He says it's an amazing second chance at his dreams and "an opportunity to go for it."

"A lot of people are trying to help me right now, and I really appreciate everything everyone is trying to do for me," he said. "I want to tell everyone who has helped me and responded to this thank you, and I hope they can help anyone else that is in my position."

Jeremy, 19, who was shoveling coal six days a week and will soon become a father of two, received a surprise from a viewer.

"They're giving us a baby shower and we really appreciate it," he said.

Eleven-year-old Erica's mother Mona, who has struggled with drug abuse, said the ABC News report was a wake-up call, and she hopes to find work soon. A local tutor stepped in to help Erica with her studies, and an education fund has been established for her by the UNITE Foundation, an anti-drug organization whose founder became a mentor to Erica. Neighbors have also volunteered to help Erica's family repair the fire damage to their Cumberland, Ky., home.

A viewer drove all the way from Nashville, Tenn., to Inez, Ky., to see 12-year-old Courtney and donate clothes to her family. And a California family is sending her the Hannah Montana boots she wants so much. Courtney's mother Angel, who lost all her teeth, received a surprise from Dr. Edwin Smith, who will give her a new set of teeth for free.

"I've waited a long long time for this," Angel said. "It's almost real now."

Smith has received donations for his mobile dental clinic, and PepsiCo has reached out to Smith to work with him on dental health initiatives and to provide a second van for his work.

Kentucky's leaders are hopeful that the stimulus bill signed this week will bring help to their region.

We're getting money to build roads and bridges," said Gov. Steve Beshear. "And part of that's gonna be done in eastern Kentucky. There's money in there for water and sewer projects. And, that's in demand in eastern Kentucky."

Lawyer and community leader Steve Cawood said that the stimulus money for train improvements is ideal for the skills of the mountain residents.

"We have hundreds and hundreds of men and women who could be the welders, be the mechanics, be the tradesmen that could build that equipment," he said.

Many spoke about green jobs to replace the options of Wal-Mart, fast food and the drug trade, and also about helping to get computers for kids in rural communities.

Eighty-one-year-old Eula Hall, who's been driving the sick out of the hills and into her clinic for 36 years, said,"I wish there was a clinic like ours in every county in Appalachia so the people would get the kind of heath care they need and deserve."

Most of all, Kentuckians said that the beauty of the Appalachian mountains should call on everyone to restart a conversation about a region in crisis that began more than 40 years ago.

"I think many times some of us turn a blind eye to the things that are painful," said Neil Middleton, the vice president of news at Kentucky television station WYMT. "Truth hurts sometimes."

"There are ways to think about the future in the mountains, in different kinds of ways than we've thought about it in the past," said Ron Eller, the author of "Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945." "We just need to be willing to dream."

A number of viewers expressed interest in contacting the children featured during the show. We cannot provide the families' personal information, but ABC News encourages anyone who wants to help the children in the story to go through the Christian Appalachian Project (CAP), which is in contact with the families and has set up special funds for each child. This includes a college fund for Shawn. CAP can also collect items such as clothing, food and toys for delivery to the families.

CLICK HERE to visit CAP's Web site or call 1-877-919-9901 or 1-866-270-4227.

Read the original story on the following pages.

Summary: Diane Sawyer updates viewers on rural children living in poverty in Appalachia on a special edition of "20/20": "A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains."


Kim Chernin is the author of ''The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness,'' which will be published this month by Harper & Row. This article is adapted from the book. By Kim Chernin

The locker room of the tennis club. A tall woman enters, removes her towel; she throws it across a bench, faces herself squarely in the m irror, climbs on the scale, looks down.

''I knew it,'' she mutters. ''Up or down?'' I ask, hoping to suggest that there might be lands and cultures where gaining weight would not be considered a disaster. ''Two pounds,'' she says, ignoring the suggestion. ''Two pounds!'' Then she turns, grabs the towel and swings out at the mirror, smashing it violently, the towel splattering water over the glass. ''Fat pig!'' she shouts at her image in the mirror. ''You fat, fat pig!''

The Harvard Medical School Health Letter estimates that some 20 million Americans are on a ''serious'' diet at any given moment. According to the sociologist Natalie Allon, these dieters are spending $10 billion dollars a year in the process, much of it at hundreds of spas and health farms that charge from $185 to $3,000 a week. Diet books enrich their authors - ''Never-Say-Diet Book,''for example, out just a year, has spent 35 weeks of that time on the best-seller list and sold 560,000 copies.

Two facts make the current obsession with weight extraordinary. One is the scope of it. Throughout history, there have been dieters, including Roman matrons, who were willing to starve themselves. But there has never been a period when such large numbers of people have spent so much time, money and emotional energy on their weight. Weight Watchers, for example, holds more than l2,000 individual classes every week and has enrolled 13 million members since its founding in 1963.

The other extraordinary aspect of today's diet phenomenon is the degree to which it is focused on women. The nation has its share of fat men, of course, and many American men seek to lose excess weight. But interviews with physicians and psychologists make it clear that the truly obsessive dieter is almost inevitably female. Representatives of diet organizations acknowledge that 95 percent of their members are women. According to Dr. Hilde Bruch, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Houston's Baylor College of Medicine and an expert on eating disorders, more than 90 percent of those suffering from anorexia nervosa, an personality disorder that leads to self-starvation, are female. Bulimia, a condition in which periods of heavy eating are followed by self-induced vomiting, is almost entirely limited to women.

Why? Why have so many millions of American women, over the last decade, become so concerned about their weight? The subject has not received much attention, except on a superficial level. It deserves better.

There is, for example, the medical explanation: Women diet because of the long-proclaimed correlation between obesity and ill health. Yet that fails to cover the intense upset many women experience because of two or three pounds of overweight. And in any event, medical opinion has changed dramatically in recent years. Dr. Reubin Andres, clinical director of Baltimore's National Institute on Aging, has found, for example, based on his review of 40 worldwide studies involving six million people, that ''there's something about being moderately overweight that's good for you.''

The psychological explanation tends to be shallow, to trivialize the problem, as though women go on periodic binges of eating and dieting simply to relieve the standard frustrations and unhappinesses of their lives. ''Food is so fundamental,'' writes James Hillman, former director of studies at the C.G. Jung Institute of Zurich, ''that it is astounding to realize the neglect of food and eating in depth psychology.''

Even more astounding, perhaps, is the neglect of the modern woman's obsession with weight by today's feminist leaders - this despite the fact that the weight-watching movement and the women's liberation movement both developed during the l960's. Indeed, in my view, this obsession involves some of the most fundamental questions feminists themselves have raised - core issues of women's identity, of the child's relationship to the mother, of the society's response to women's claims for power.


Feb 22nd 2012, 18:36 by J.L. | NAIROBI

ON TUESDAY night, when the news broke that Kenya's environment minister, John Michuki, had passed away in the Aga Khan hospital in Nairobi, Kenyans reacted with sorrow. Here was a big man who had actually done something for them. It was true, in a way. Mr Michuki served his country from before its independence and throughout his sickness. Those who worked with the 80-year-old politician on environmental issues were amazed at his energy and ferocity. Mr Michuki set out to save the Nairobi river from the sludge of human waste and to preserve the Mau forest for future Kenyans. As transport minister took on the anarchic minibus industry. He forced minibuses to use speed regulators, and the so-called Michuki rules—proper seats and seat belts—saved many lives.

But as the country's internal security minister, his hands were covered in blood. He was implicated in mass extrajudicial killings in 2007, in which hundreds of young Kenyan men were shot in the back of the head or bludgeoned to death for their alleged involvement in the Mungiki organised crime gang. And in 2006 Mr Michuki made a fool of himself by bringing to Kenya a pair of Armenian gangsters to shut down newspapers and television critical of the government. Since then, the country's media have operated more or less freely.

To many Mr Michuki was a bridge to an older Africa. The space between tribal traditions and the palatial Windsor Golf Club, which Mr Michuki built at the north end of Nairobi, can be measured in his life span. He was born in 1932 into a large polygamous Kikuyu family. Orphaned as a child, Mr Michuki left his rural home for Nairobi. He found work in a uniform shop sewing on buttons before battling his way through primary and secondary school. He was loyal to the crown in its bloody hammering of the Mau Mau insurgency. Choosing the British over his countrymen set him at odds with the founding myth of Kenya, but Mr Michuki was too intelligent and "no nonsense" to let it hinder his career. He won a scholarship to Oxford, and became a district commissioner. He was put in charge of newly independent Kenya's treasury. He ran the Kenya Commercial Bank and got involved in politics. Like the then attorney-general, Charles Njonjo, Mr Michuki had an Anglophile sense of things "being done properly."

To Mr Michuku, that meant keeping his buttons polished and being on time, but it did not mean transparency. He was part of the cabal of Kikuyu and Meru politicians, intelligence officers and businessmen who ran a state within a state and turned a blind eye to dodgy land and business dealings. President Mwai Kibaki yesterday called Mr Michuki a "true family friend and a dependable ally." The shame was that his acuity and vigour were not more often put at the service of the common man. Historians will study his legacy, but Baobab readers can weigh in immediately.


Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Pulitzer Prizes, announced Monday, is the fact that no novel was judged worthy of the $10,000 prize. It's the first time since 1977 that has happened and the 11th time since Columbia University began the prestigious awards in 1917.

Manning Marable, who died last April, just as his 'Malcolm X' biography was about to be published, is the Pulitzer winner for non-fiction.

Manning Marable, who died last April, just as his 'Malcolm X' biography was about to be published, is the Pulitzer winner for non-fiction.

Don't blame the three-person fiction jury: novelist Michael Cunningham and critics Maureen Corrigan and Susan Larson.

After reading 341 books, they nominated three titles to the 18 voting members of the Pulitzer board, which "could not determine a winner," says Pulitzer Prize administrator Sig Gissler, who sits on the board. Its members include prominent journalists such as TheNew York Times' Thomas Friedman. Its only fiction writer is novelist Junot Diaz.

"None of the three books could get a majority of votes," Gissler says.

•Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, a novella set in the old American West.

•Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, a debut novel set in the Florida Everglades about a failing theme park.

•The Pale King by the late David Foster Wallace. Published after the author's 2008 suicide, the novel is set in an IRS office.

•History: The late Manning Marable for Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. The author, a Columbia University professor who had worked more than a decade on the biography, died of pneumonia last April, three days before the book was published.

•Biography: John Lewis Gaddis for George F. Kennan: An American Life. An American diplomat, Kennan was a pivotal figure during the Cold War who advocated the policy of containing the Soviet Union.

•Non-fiction: Stephen Greenblatt for The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, which tells the story of a 15th-century book hunter who rescued classical manuscripts and influenced history. It previously had won the 2011 National Book Award for non-fiction.

•Drama:Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegría Hudes, a play about a returning Iraq veteran in Philadelphia.

•Poetry:Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith.

•Music:Silent Night: Opera in Two Acts by Kevin Puts, commissioned and premiered by the Minnesota Opera in Minneapolis.

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Summary: The board couldn't pick from three finalists, but six works in other categories did get $10,000 prizes.


Here are highlights of some of the city's newest and nicest playgrounds. Bring the fogscreen and don't forget the goldfish.

Where: Diamond Heights Boulevard at Digby Street.

Who's there: Noe Valley and Glen Park kids and moms; weekend dads; teens with hoop dreams; Diamond Heights dog owners.

Description: With separate play structures for younger and older kids and showstopping skyline views, the renovated Walter Haas has caused many a Douglass Park and Day Street loyalist to jump ship.

Best features: The varied-level climbing poles, the waterplay sand area and an undulating bicycle path that's great for beginning riders.

Downside: No bathrooms; slippery drifting sand on the rubber mats.

Bonus points: Showstopping views of downtown and the bay.

Where: Hoff Street between 16th and 17th streets.

Who's there: Families with young children from the Mission District.

Description: This new (2004) pocket playground was the result of months of lobbying by neighborhood children to turn a rundown parking lot into a kid-friendly space, and its name is a testament to their perseverance. Tucked into a sunny little alleyway in the heart of the Mission and enclosed by wrought-iron gates, it features a large fountain surrounded by wooden tables and benches, and arbors festooned with fanciful sculptural flowers. On one side, a brightly painted structure has cargo nets and baby teeter-totters; on the other side, there's a giant spiderweb climbing dome. Both sides have wall-to-wall soft flooring.

Best feature: "Our Children," a soaring three-story mosaic-mural by Josef Norris that flanks the south side of the park.

Downside: No bathrooms. No sand feature.

Bonus points: You can park across the street in a secure garage -- a big asset in a neighborhood where parking is scarce and often a little sketchy.

Where: West Pacific Avenue near Arguello, in the Presidio.

Who's there: Marina, Pacific Heights and Richmond District moms, nannies and grannies.

Description: After its overhaul in 2003, "JK" became the "it" playground for Pacific Heights and Richmond District moms and their nannies. It's one of the loveliest settings for a playground in all of San Francisco, if not the Bay Area: sunny and sheltered, surrounded by softball and soccer fields, with the verdant Presidio as a backdrop. On the playground itself, a mini-climbing wall, spinning cups, and a spiderweb dome are a few of the highlights.

Best feature: The canal fed by a slow-drip water spigot, where kids create dams and rivers and build sand castles.

Downside: Can get seriously crowded on sunny days.

Bonus points: The clubhouse has arts and crafts classes for kids.

Where: Vicente Street and 26th Avenue.

Who's there: City softball and kid soccer leagues; anyone under the age of 7 seven who lives in the Sunset.

Description: Sitting on a knoll above Stern Grove, surrounded by ball fields and basketball courts, Parkside is one of the city's largest playgrounds, and the only one that is fully ADA (handicapped) accessible for people with disabilities. Two colorful play structures include long ramps, tube slides, and swinging bars. There's a giant spiderweb climbing dome, a sand area with water fountain, and unique see-saws and swings.

Best features: The bottom of one of the play structures is designed like the bow of a pirate ship with a cargo net. At the top, there's a spy glass for spotting yer mateys.

Downside: While the kids seem impervious, to the fog and wind, they can turn mom's lips blue.

Bonus points: In the summer, you can hear the music from the Stern Grove concerts below.

Where: Highland Avenue at Bocana Street.

Who's there: Kids in the 'hood (Bernal Heights, Holly Park, St. Mary's).

Description: Before 2004, most parents would have looked at you blankly if you asked them about Holly Park. Though it's one of the city's oldest green spaces, it had a reputation for being a bit rough and the playground was, well, lame. A dedicated community effort brought about a $2 million makeover, complete with colorful playhouses, slides, swings, cargo ropes and a lovely little picnic area off to one side. At the top of the hill, there are basketball and tennis courts, and spectacular views.

Best feature: A new-fangled stretchy-rope merry-go-round.

Downside: The wind can whip around here something fierce.

Bonus points: Its grassy hillside location makes this one of the best spots in town for barrel rolling.

Where: 20th and Vermont streets.

Who's there: A nice blend of new hipster parents, old-time Potrero Hillers and nannies.

Description: It's hard to beat the location of this park -- a bucolic, balmy square set atop snaky Vermont Street (the real "crookedest street in San Francisco"). Surrounded by gorgeous Victorians and pretty pocket gardens, the park feels a million miles away from the concrete jungle. McKinley features two play structures for big and little kids, and an all-sand floor (its 1999 renovation preceded some of the current high-tech playground materials). A full spectrum of slides -- corkscrew, tube, wavy -- offers nice variety, and there's a grassy area outside the fence for kicking a ball around.

Best feature: The old-fashioned cement-wall sandbox is great for keeping toddlers entertained ... and corralled.

Downside: No bathrooms, plastic play structures.

Bonus points: As my Texas Street compadres say, "It's always sunny on Potrero Hill."

Where: Lenox Way between Taraval and Ulloa streets.

Who's there: A regular round-up of the neighborhood 5-and-unders, and spillover from the yard at adjacent West Portal Elementary School.

Description: Reopened last year with a refurbished clubhouse, spruced-up bathrooms and new picnic tables, West Portal is a longtime parent favorite for its intimate feel and gently sloping grass field where kids chase balls and swing bats (equipment is often provided by the rec center).

Best feature: The wooden stationary train (BYO engineers).

Downside: It's on a steep hill atop the streetcar tunnel, and parking can be challenging.

Bonus points: The expanded clubhouse, which offers a full slate of music, arts and crafts and even cooking classes for kids.

Summary: Noe Valley and Glen Park kids and moms; weekend dads; teens with hoop dreams; Diamond Heights dog owners.  With separate play structures for younger and older kids and showstopping skyline views, the renovated Walter Haas has caused many a Douglass Park and Day Street loyalist to jump ship.  The varied-level climbing poles, the waterplay sand area and an undulating bicycle path that's great for beginning riders.  Tucked into a sunny little alleyway in the heart of the Mission and enclosed by wrought-iron gates, it features a large fountain surrounded by wooden tables and benches, and arbors festooned with fanciful sculptural flowers.  On one side, a brightly painted structure has cargo nets and baby teeter-totters; on the other side, there's a giant spiderweb climbing dome.  After its overhaul in 2003, "JK" became the "it" playground for Pacific Heights and Richmond District moms and their nannies.  The canal fed by a slow-drip water spigot, where kids create dams and rivers and build sand castles.  City softball and kid soccer leagues; anyone under the age of 7 seven who lives in the Sunset.  Sitting on a knoll above Stern Grove, surrounded by ball fields and basketball courts, Parkside is one of the city's largest playgrounds, and the only one that is fully ADA (handicapped) accessible for people with disabilities.  Two colorful play structures include long ramps, tube slides, and swinging bars.  The bottom of one of the play structures is designed like the bow of a pirate ship with a cargo net.  A dedicated community effort brought about a $2 million makeover, complete with colorful playhouses, slides, swings, cargo ropes and a lovely little picnic area off to one side.  McKinley features two play structures for big and little kids, and an all-sand floor (its 1999 renovation preceded some of the current high-tech playground materials).  A full spectrum of slides -- corkscrew, tube, wavy -- offers nice variety, and there's a grassy area outside the fence for kicking a ball around.  Reopened last year with a refurbished clubhouse, spruced-up bathrooms and new picnic tables, West Portal is a longtime parent favorite for its intimate feel and gently sloping grass field where kids chase balls and swing bats (equipment is often provided by the rec center).  The expanded clubhouse, which offers a full slate of music, arts and crafts and even cooking classes for kids.


Frankie Cutlass, whose many hip-hop deejay credits include a stint on the Flip Squad at WQHT (97.

1 FM), will be spinning today at 4 p.

m. for a gospel concert at Madison Square Garden. That fits with Cutlass' main gig these days: God Squad Entertainment. A former member of the Latin Kings who collaborated with hip-hoppers like Notorious B.

G., Busta Rhymes and Mobb Deep, Cutlass also now does motivational speaking. AROUND THE DIAL: Steve Van Zandt will salute Edd (Kookie) Byrnes tomorrow on "Underground Garage," 10 p.

3 FM). ... Fans of Ron and Fez, who used to be on WNEW (102.

7 FM), will be gathering tonight at 9 at Karavas Place, W. Fourth St. and Sixth Ave., to hear Crankcase, the original R&F show band. ... Mick Jagger's 60th birthday will be saluted on WFUV (90.

7 FM), both by Pete Fornatale, 5-8 p.

m. today, and John Platt, 8-11 a.

m. tomorrow. ... Steve Wynn is Vin Scelsa's guest tonight, 8-midnight, on WFUV. ... Rich Conaty salutes Rudy Vallee tomorrow night, 8-midnight, on WFUV. ... Jeremy Coleman, who was program director of WNEW (102.

7 FM) when the Opie and Anthony St. Patrick's Cathedral stunt blew up, has been named vice president of news, talk and entertainment at Sirius satellite radio. Sirius has dismissed several music programmers, including area veterans Dennis Falcone, Scott Warren, Robert Taylor and Jerry Rubino. ... Joe Franklin plays a tribute to Celia Cruz tonight at midnight on WOR (710 AM).

Summary:
Frankie Cutlass, whose many hip-hop deejay credits include a stint on the Flip Squad at WQHT (97.1 FM), will be spinning today at 4 p.m. for a gospel concert at Madison Square Garden.
   That fits with Cutlass' main gig these days: God Squad Entertainment.
   A former member of the Latin Kings who collaborated with hip-hoppers like Notorious B.I.G., Busta Rhymes and Mobb Deep, Cutlass also now does motivational


I first meet Dasha Zhukova in June, at the launch of her latest project - the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture (GCCC), an enormous new art gallery in Moscow, housed in a disused Soviet bus depot. She is dressed like something out of Breakfast at Tiffany's, complete with Audrey Hepburn headband, and spends much of the evening holding hands with the man his friends call "Roma": Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich.

The evening itself is a spectacle. Most of the guests seem bamboozled by the generous hospitality: a feast of piri piri prawns, roast sirloin and cherry trifle flown in from London; a selection of cigarettes and vodkas and limitless Ruinart champagne, which is still flowing when I leave the after-party at 6am. Amy Winehouse plays a set that is rumoured to have cost £1m - a sum that Zhukova later denies - and although the singer is emaciated and definitely not sober, the appreciation of the 300-strong audience lifts her, and vocally she performs well. Zhukova unveils a stunning installation by Mexican artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer - an interactive tree made up of thousands of lights, which pulsates in time to the beat of her heart. Abramovich looks on proudly, and, later, the couple dance.

The crowd represents the international art set: collectors, gallerists, artists including Jeff Koons, Marco Perego (Dolce & Gabbana's favourite artist) and British sculptor Conrad Shawcross. Although Charlotte Casiraghi (daughter of Princess Caroline of Monaco) turns up, Paris Hilton is a rumoured no-show. Not all of these people are Zhukova's friends - many at the launch have never met her. But they are part of the circle she is now keen to cultivate.

With the launch of GCCC, which officially opens in September, Zhukova, 27, a Russian heiress, is increasingly intriguing. Born in Moscow and raised in Los Angeles, she has already been a homeopathy student, fashion designer and international It girl - although her most famous role is as Abramovich's girlfriend. And now, all of a sudden, she has turned arts mogul.

How does she describe herself, I ask, when we meet again for breakfast at the Berkeley Hotel in Knightsbridge, London, a favourite hang-out for wealthy Russians. "I generally don't like this question," she says, wrinkling her perfect nose, "because it's so hard to answer. I have many interests and I like keeping busy and working on several projects at the same time. Right now I'm developing an arts centre. I don't see myself as a person who just does one thing. I understand that sometimes that might sound a bit unprofessional. But I disagree."

Whether she is a Renaissance woman or a wealthy dilettante, Zhukova, who is based between London, Moscow and Los Angeles, is keen to style herself as a serious force in the contemporary-arts world. As well as fronting Garage, as GCCC has already become known, she has dug deep into her own pockets to sponsor this year's Serpentine Gallery summer party in London on September 9 (the invitation reads: "With Dasha Zhukova, GCCC Moscow"). This is no small gesture: the party is one of the biggest events on the social calendar; previous sponsors include Yves Saint Laurent and Swarovski.

She already runs a successful cult fashion line, Kova & T, which is famous for its £75 Dasha Skinny jeans, and is beloved by the likes of Drew Barrymore. (The line is stocked by 50 outlets in the US, and sold in 12 other countries.) So why open a museum of contemporary art as well? "You know, I have no clear explanation," she says in her Valley Girl drawl. "It is a bunch of things. I like to create, to do something new, something that does not have a predictable outcome. I love art and this project excites me and it has an incredible potential to be immensely challenging and satisfying. Of course, everyone wants to make a difference and help people or provide things they would be happy to see . . ." She trails off. "I have had an interest in art since childhood. I loved to draw as a child and still do. Though," she makes a rare attempt at a joke, "my biggest admirer is my grandmother."

In her defence, she seems tired and slightly confused. She has come straight from a meeting at the Serpentine and, only hours before, more meetings at art galleries in New York. For the past few months she has been on a quest to educate herself in all matters concerning contemporary art. "I won't pretend to be the biggest connoisseur of the contemporary artists of today," she says, awkwardly, "though I know and love it quite a lot." She heads for the breakfast table and returns with a plate of tomatoes, croissant and ham. She orders still water. Up close, her skin is as dewy as a 16-year-old's and she has the most mesmerisingly flawless teeth. Her speech is peppered with Clueless expressions: "Or whatever . . . " "Oh, cool", "Yuh, yuh." But she comes across as oddly middle-aged and serious.

She is more comfortable speaking American English than Russian and even pronounces her own surname with a hard Z and a long "oh" like an American (Zoo-kohva) instead of the Russian way (Zhuk-ova, with the accent on the first syllable). She dresses demurely: black leggings and cardigan, white ballet flats, no makeup, hair tied loosely back - a sort of anti-Victoria Beckham. She aims for anonymity, especially in London: "Sometimes you see photographers in places you would not expect, but overall it is pretty calm."

Her Moscow art project is, in many ways, a surprising turn of events. Having spent her early years in Russia, she went to live in the US at the age of 10 with her mother Elena, a molecular biologist and authority on diabetes, who took up jobs first in Houston, then Los Angeles. Her parents had divorced when she was a small child, - her father Alexander is an oil magnate and business associate of Abramovich's. Both her parents remarried and went on to have twins, so Zhukova is in the unusual position of feeling like an only child while also being the eldest of five siblings. She lived in the US for 12 years before returning to Russia.

The lonely transition to American life cannot have been easy. She went straight to school the day after her arrival, knowing no English. For the first few weeks she sat reading Pippi Longstocking in Russian at the back of the class. "When you're 10, you don't realise it's difficult. It's an adventure. When you're in a situation that is foreign to you, you just have to pull yourself together and adapt."

She will be needing this can-do attitude to launch Garage. The space is an avant-garde constructivist masterpiece designed in 1926 by the architect Konstantin Melnikov, and is reminiscent of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. The centre will be privately funded by international sponsors, understood to include Abramovich, although Zhukova is also wealthy in her own right, thanks to her family's money. The director of the project is the aristocratic curator Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst, with the Tate's Sir Nicholas Serota rumoured to be joining the advisory board. GCCC's first exhibition, a retrospective of the work of New York-based husband-and-wife installation artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, is eagerly anticipated. Labelled "non-conformist" during the Soviet era, Ilya Kabakov is well-known in the west as one of Russia's greatest conceptualist artists - especially since his emigration from Moscow in the late 1980s. He has collaborated with his curator wife Emilia (a distant cousin: they met in Moscow during childhood) since their marriage in 1992, and together they create powerful, imposing installations such as The Palace of Projects, a 40-foot spiral structure that had its debut at the Roundhouse, in London, 10 years ago. The Kabakovs' work has rarely been seen in Russia and this opening is regarded as something of a coup for Moscow's fledgling contemporary arts scene.

It is difficult to measure how much Abramovich is investing in the project, but in May this year, around the time of Zhukova's birthday, he was revealed as the mystery buyer of Lucian Freud's Benefits Advisor Sleeping (£17m) and Francis Bacon's Triptych (£43m). As one arts patron puts it, "You don't buy that kind of thing unless you really want to show off what a big collector you are." But Zhukova says, somewhat disingenuously: "I have never been a collector. I have a few pieces that I got for my birthdays or that I bought for myself: I acquire things that speak to me and put them on my wall. When I see things I like, I just know." She doesn't get any more specific: when I ask her which artists she particularly likes, she says: "I'm, like, really bad at remembering names."

Many in Moscow believe that Zhukova and Abramovich want to style themselves as among the world's most serious art connoisseurs and that the centre will eventually become a showcase for their own private collection. The money they have can easily make more of a difference than state investment. This could prove a controversial contribution, though: in Russia, there is still intense resentment towards the oligarch class that the likes of Abramovich and Alexander Zhukov, Dasha's father, represent, with much of the population believing that the wealth of these individuals was made by impoverishing the Russian people. Even now, many are offended by the large sums of money that change hands. While Abramovich was spending £61m in one birthday spree, the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, announced an £85m expansion of Moscow's State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, which attracts a million visitors a year and has one of the finest collections of Impressionist paintings in the world.

One interpretation of the Garage launch is that this foray into the art world is Zhukova's attempt to distance herself from Abramovich and establish her own identity. Despite the fact that I have met them both together, when I ask, she declines even to confirm their relationship, shaking her head whenever his name is mentioned. But all this mystery is to no avail: in Moscow, the gallery project is frequently linked to Abramovich rather than Zhukova. If it is annoying to find all your efforts being attributed to your boyfriend, though, Zhukova is too discreet to complain.

She brushes off the suggestion that she is part of a bigger cultural shift: the emergence of a privileged elite that is rediscovering its Russian roots and using philanthropy to invest in the motherland. This is, at least, one way for women to affect Russia's future. In Moscow, many dynamic women run businesses - often with a husband's or father's money - but few are able to break through into the well-connected circles of the super-rich. There are few women in Russian politics: when Irina Khakamada, once one of Russia's most prominent female politicians, ran against Putin in 2004, she said: "The first priority is not when will there be a first women president of Russia, but when the president will be someone not chosen by the oligarchs and the vlast [the powers that be]." (Khakamada resigned from politics in March this year.) Among the oligarchs there is only one woman, construction magnate Elena Baturina, wife of Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov.

Arguably, charity is one of the only routes dynamic young women have to affect Russia's future. Three years ago, Russian-born supermodel Natalia Vodianova (personal worth: £11m) launched her Naked Heart Foundation to fund urban playgrounds. Television presenter and socialite Ksenia Sobchak (daughter of the late Anatoli, once mayor of St Petersburg and Putin's political mentor) has dabbled in politics, founding youth movement All Free to little effect. Former Miss Russia Oxana Fedorova stood for election to the Duma and failed, and recently became a Unicef goodwill ambassador.

While Abramovich is understood to be on good terms with Putin, Zhukova comes across as apolitical. She won't even be drawn on the subject of her family's fortunes during the Soviet era: she says she doesn't know whether they were privileged or not. She is not remotely analytical about what she does, or about what it means in a wider context. "I definitely feel Russian. I feel Russian but at the same time when I'm in the States I feel at home too. I don't know if this is a patriotic gesture or just a lucky coincidence," she says: "I just saw the building and thought: what a great place. Nothing ever turns out the way you plan it or imagine it." Her plans for the centre sound ambitious but vague: she wants educational programmes, collaborations with fashion and interiors designers, a cafe, a library, a book shop.

Meanwhile, there are rumours that she and Abramovich are planning to marry in October. Abramovich has just rushed through planning permission for Britain's most expensive private residence - a £150m palace behind Harvey Nichols in Knightsbridge - so perhaps she won't be spending that much time in Moscow after all.

Fedor Pavlov, director of the Russian arts group Marka:FF, says that this won't affect whether Garage is successful: "People will come and see the space because of Abramovich's name. He buys significant art works, giving a sense of assurance to those who are not yet sure whether it's worth collecting contemporary art. And Garage has an opportunity to become Moscow's Tate Modern - it will be for tourists, art professionals and just for ordinary people who want to know more about the taste of the wealthiest man in Russia." People in art circles have started calling the place "Dashkin Garazh" (Dasha's Garage), says Pavlov, adding that "Dasha's reputation is controversial. People who know her adore her. Those who were 'accidentally' not invited to the Garage private opening already started hating her." People are impressed, though, he says, by dynamic individuals who don't wait for state support, who just get on and do things: "She is a great sign for Russian contemporary culture."

There is only one other modern art centre in Moscow, the Winzavod Centre for Contemporary Art, which opened last year. "Russians don't understand contemporary art," explains Moscow gallery owner Marina Goncharenko, "They are afraid of it. The level of appreciation is just not there. And the government does not support contemporary art." In this climate, someone with Zhukova's youthful celebrity profile is ideal as an ambassador, says Olga Sviblova, director of the Moscow House of Photography, who has herself persuaded Abramovich to sponsor several photographic exhibitions in London and Moscow: "Dasha is very intelligent and she educates herself very quickly about everything to do with the art world. I think she will be able to bring this to a new audience here. It's certainly one of the most original spaces in Moscow."

Others are hopeful, but sceptical. Goncharenko says: "It will be very upsetting and distasteful if it's all just a game. 'Let's all go and live in London.' 'Let's all collect art now.' To develop this kind of project, you need a big plan and I hope they have one. If they're just playing at contemporary art, the sooner it's over the better. But if this is their life's work then it merits respect. If it's serious, then it's worthy. To develop something like this in Moscow requires a lot of energy and huge material investment. Because Russian art deserves this kind of legacy."

At least Zhukova is trying to do something, even if it is not quite clear what. "Dasha's reputation in the art world is not yet well established," says Pavlov, "as people tend to think she is like a moth that flies to the light. To strengthen the Russian side of her character she would need to make more friends in Moscow just to become native - which is quite realistic given her Russian childhood. People talk of her as an exotic fruit from overseas."

Summary: Viv Groskop on the Russian heiress keen to style herself as a serious force in the contemporary-arts world


A woman looks at Denkmal der Maerzgefallenen in Weimar by Walter Gropius during the exhibition Bauhaus. A Conceptual Model in Berlin Photograph: Tobias Schwarz/Reuters

It started as a controversial experiment in the social effects of art and design, producing ideas that were often considered impractical, uncomfortable and costly. But 90 years after its conception by radical and combative designers the Bauhaus movement is nowadays credited with having had the biggest influence of any movement on modern, minimalist style.

The biggest retrospective of the German art school has opened in Berlin, showing the movement's creations – from weighing scales to seats shaped from gaspipes, coffee pots and the spartan elegance of a doctor's surgery – and exploring its enduring effect on society.

The exhibition Modell Bauhaus, at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, celebrates the school's socialist ideology, according to which its designers sought to find a way to produce functional and affordable design, available to the masses. Modell Bauhaus, which will travel to New York's MoMA in November, explores the movement's adage "less is more", as well as the connection between the Bauhaus and modern, mass-produced design.

Many proponents of the decidedly non-conformist movement, which was founded in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius, argue that, like it or loathe it, the Bauhaus' most powerful modern-day legacy is the Swedish flat-pack furniture store Ikea. "Mass-market design like Ikea's would be inconceivable today without the Bauhaus," said the newly-appointed director of the Bauhaus foundation, Philipp Oswalt, in an interview ahead of the anniversary celebrations. Events taking place across Germany include dance and theatre productions, architectural tours, readings and workshops.

The movement is still very much in existence but nowadays it largely concentrates on urban planning rather than household objects. Gone too are the movement's utopian ideas about establishing a conflict-free world. "Today we have relinquished the naive hopes and realise that utopias are not enough," Oswalt said. The Berlin exhibition charts the movement's progress through its 14-year existence, from the Weimar school, which was founded in 1919 to the Dessau school and finally to the Berlin school, led by architect Mies van der Rohe, that was closed by the Nazis in 1933. While some say the Nazi ban led to the movement's break-up, the very fact that many of its members fled to all corners of the world such as China, America and Israel allowed the Bauhaus influence to spread much more effectively than it might have done had its focus remained in Germany.

The exhibition makes much of the movement's desire to experiment, in objects such as Lothar Schreyer's design for a coffin for his wife, the striped dresses of Lis Volgers or Marcel Breuer's Clubsessel B3, a somewhat uncomfortable steel-frame armchair.

But it was not a case of all work and no play. Photographs document the members' penchant for partying. Partygoers were often invited to turn up to celebrations dressed up as the very household objects – such as cooking pots and plates – that the artists were attempting to redesign, and to enter the room via a large slide.

Summary: Berlin retrospective for movement banned by Nazis and now reflected at Ikea


With the South Carolina-Georgia game on the horizon, I'm here to represent the Bulldogs. While trash talk can be good-natured and fun, facts can be cruel. We're going to deal in facts.

In objective journalistic fashion, I'll start with two things I like about you: Your gas prices and the best college football prank ever pulled.

To be clear, that is all there is to like about South Carolina and Columbia.

Let's start with South Carolina's lack of identity. Dabo Swinney, beat him as soundly as you may, was irrefutably correct when saying that Carolina was in Chapel Hill and USC was in California. Hey, if I had to identify with the state of South Carolina, I would have an identity crisis myself. Do remember, your's is a state best-known for Myrtle Beach, a place that makes Panama City look like a quaint Mediterranean villa by comparison. So your next coping mechanism is to shroud yourself in "S-E-C!" chants. This is funny to me for two reasons:

1) When the conference expanded to 12 teams, you were the third choice (behind Florida State and Miami) for inclusion among Eastern teams! Said another way, you were the last moderately viable choice.

2) You have never won the SEC. You came close once, if 39-point losses qualify as close.

The phrase "act like you've been there before" would apply to your fanbase, but the fact is ... you haven't been there before. It's fitting that you won the ACC title in 1969, given that man walked on the moon the same year. As with the moon landing, it could be fake and nobody knows for certain that it happened. The mighty Gamecocks went 6-0 against an otherwise hapless conference and 1-4 in their other games, with a 14-3 Peach Bowl loss to West Virginia the closest among those four.

South Carolina's first bowl win came in 1995. A full half of your bowl appearances (18 in total) have come since 2001 in an era where you only have to win six games (out of 12) to get to one. You even screwed that up one year with the Clemson brawl in 2004.

As for recent history, South Carolina's success under Steve Spurrier is commendable. He was the man to finally get the program over .500 all-time even though it's still under .500 against the ACC, Big 10, Big XII, SEC, and get this: the Big East/AAC. South Carolina's 1-1 against the Pac-12, so...congrats. You've played Sandstorm before kickoffs since 2006, even though it hit the airwaves in 2000 and was played out by 2004. Unfortunately, this correlates directly with your program's success.

You play Georgia this week. The fact that the Ol' Ball Coach has won three in a row against the Dawgs should make you feel good, but those triumphs raised your win percentage against Georgia to just over 26 percent all-time. Your Heisman candidate defensive end, coming off a stellar three-tackle performance against a hapless North Carolina team (in which over half of your offensive yards came on three broken plays), is set to be silenced again. When he is, we know you'll complain that he was sick, injured, held or tired, because he should get a sack every time the opponent's quarterback drops back to throw, right?

I'd say "good luck," but historical precedent is clearly not on your side. Your best bet is to remain the rudest and least successful fans in the SEC and to do so from your concrete-and-abandoned-warehouse Detroit Jr. of a city you call home.

However, if you do show up, you'll notice a couple of things unfamiliar to your university:

1) Grass: A herbacious plant with narrow leaves growing from the base, normally the ground. We have it on our campus.

2) Class: Instead of waving a white towel (international signal for surrender, but I bet you knew that) and yelling GO COCKS in response to everything you say, we'll actually try to engage you in conversation at the University of Georgia.

3) We do have a robust bar scene with more than 70 watering holes within one mile of the stadium. Enjoy your time in an actual, honest-to-goodness, college town while you're here.

-- Chad Floyd is a contributor and editor at the blog Dude You Crazy. Follow him on Twitter @Chad_Floyd.

Summary:
Dear South Carolina fans,
With the South Carolina-Georgia game on the horizon, I'm here to represent the Bulldogs. While trash talk can be good-nature...


On Monday, 24-year-old Gus Deeds was discharged from a rural Virginia hospital after a mental health evaluation, reportedly because there were no psychiatric beds available in the area, according to local media outlets.

The consequences seem to have been been exceptionally tragic: the day after being released, police believe, Gus Deeds likely stabbed his father, state Sen. Creigh Deeds, before killing himself. It’s not clear whether Deeds was ever diagnosed with a mental illness. But his discharge from Bath County Community Hospital appears to have been all too common: Americans are routinely shut out of mental health facilities across the country for lack of beds.

Nationally, the number of psychiatric beds has been steadily declining as hospitals moved away from institutionalizing patients and budget cuts have taken hold. The number of hospital beds in freestanding psychiatric hospitals has dropped 13% between 2002 and 2011, according to the American Hospital Association.

But the need hasn’t declined as quickly, and there haven’t been adequate alternatives to pick up the slack. Between April 2010 and March 2011, about 200 Virginia residents were deemed to be “in imminent danger to themselves or others as a result of mental illness or is so seriously mentally ill to care for self and is incapable or unwilling to volunteer for treatment.” But they were nevertheless released from custody because mental facilities didn’t have the capacity to admit them, according to a 2011 report from Virginia’s Inspector General.

In many major US cities, bed shortages have prompted emergency rooms to “warehouse” the mentally ill in holding rooms and hallways, where they languish without treatment. One Seattle woman who tried unsuccessfully to commit her mentally disturbed son in 2011 was told there were no beds available; he killed himself days later.

Civil commitment laws prohibit states from indefinitely detaining people who are deemed to require a mental health evalution or hospitalization. The 2007 Virginia Tech shooting prompted an overhaul of the process, but the basics have remained the same: once someone receives an official mental health evaluation in Virginia, that person can be taken into custody against their will for four hours with the approval of a local magistrate judge, as reportedly happened with Gus Deeds. But even if a mental health professional decides that person needs to be committed, if there is no bed available within four hours’ time—or six hours with a magistrate’s approval—he or she must be released.

“This is a problem for many states with large rural areas that have downsized state hospitals,” says Richard Bonnie, a University of Virginia professor of law and medicine. A new UVA study showed that beds could not be found in time for 4 percent of mentally ill people recommended for involuntary commitment in Virginia before they had to be released.

Part of the downsizing is by design: For decades, American psychiatry has been moving away from the state psych wards of old and toward more community-based, privatized, and outpatient care. But advocates say far too little has been provided to fill in the gap. More than 50% of US counties “have no practicing psychiatrists, psychologists or social workers,” the AHA reports, and just 27% of community hospitals have an organized, in-patient psychiatric unit. In rural areas, access is even more challenging, as patients often have to travel long distances to reach providers and hospitals, and crisis intervention services have been particularly lacking on the local level.

“People should not be locked up in state hospitals forever. The problem is that the community services which were supposed to be developed so that people could be served in the community aren’t being retained. That’s made access very, very difficult if someone really does need it,” says Mira Signer, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Virginia.

Funding for mental health services took a particular hit during the recession, The Virginia Tech shooting prompted the state government to add $42 million in additional funding for mental health services in 2008, but the support was soon gutted as the financial crisis took hold. Between 2009 and 2010, Virginia cut mental health funding by $38.5 million, or about 9%, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and many states cut even more.

Virginia has slowly started re-investing in the system, increasing mental health funding in the 2013-14 budget by about $5.7 million, according to NAMI Virginia. Both of Virginia’s gubernatorial candidates promised to improve the state’s mental health services, and more would receive under the Medicaid expansion that Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe has vowed to enact.

Advocates hope the momentum continues, warning that the country’s jails, emergency rooms, and homeless shelters will also bear the burden if there aren’t adequate mental health services. “Acts of violence are exceptional,” says Signer. “When a tragedy like this happens, it’s because something in the mental health system has gone terribly wrong.”

Join national correspondent Suzy Khimm for a conversation about our country’s mental health systems Tuesday, November 26 at 4 p.m. EST in the comments of this article. You can submit your questions under The MSNBC Cyclists group in the comments.

Summary: The day before he apparently stabbed his father and shot himself, Gus Deeds was discharged from a VA hospital, reportedly for lack of psychiatric beds.


Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Josh Beckett threw the first no-hitter of his career Sunday, and also the first no-hitter of the 2014 season.

Beckett, 34, achieved the milestone during his team’s 6-0 victory against the Philadelphia Phillies on Sunday, the Associated Press reports. Beckett struck out six players, walked three others and didn’t allow the opposing team — which counts former MVPs and All-Stars on its lineup — to score a single hit on the 128 pitches he threw.

Major league baseball hasn’t seen a no-hitter since Henderson Álvarez of the Miami Marlins threw against the Detroit Tigers on the last day of the 2013 season.

The right-handed Beckett, whose career was threatened by injuries last year, is the first Dodger to pitch a no-hitter since Hideo Nomo back in September of 1996.

Summary: The right-hander didn't let the Phillies land a single hit on his 128 pitches during Sunday's game; the team's last no-hitter was in 1996


Earlier this month, Angry Birds creator Rovio raised $42 million in venture capital funding from Accel Partners and Atomico Ventures. Less than a week later, the Internet was buzzing with talk that the Finnish company was planning to go public in New York. Some examples:

Wow. What a quick flip. And easy money for the VCs, who basically get to act as bridge financiers… Wait. Hold on. I’m getting word that these headlines are horribly misleading.

Rovio is not going public this year. Or next year. And probably not even in 2013.

Each of these stories was based on interviews with company chairman Kaj Hed, who said that Rovio hopes to list in New York within the next five years. In other words, he said the same thing that almost every other entrepreneur says upon raising lots of VC funding (“we hope to make this a great company, eventually take it public, yada yada.”)

I’m not dismissing Rovio’s chances of a successful IPO, just its chances of a successful IPO anytime soon. In fact, Rovio CEO Mikael Hed told me that Rovio expects to raise more VC funding “sometime in the future” — an infusion that almost certainly would come before any public offering.

So no Rovio IPO… yet.

Summary: Earlier this month, Angry Birds creator Rovio raised $42 million in venture capital funding from Accel Partners and Atomico Ventures. Less than a week later, the Internet was buzzing with talk that the Finnish company was planning to go public in New York. Some examples: Mashable: Angry Birds maker, Rovio, plans IPO BBC: Angry Birds developer set…