Aldon Smith returned to the field Sunday, and one thing was immediately clear: The front office and the coaching staff, this time, were on the same page.

Smith did not start the game. He played only 11 snaps, exclusively in third-down nickel situations.

That was much different from his last game on the field, the 49ers' loss against Indianapolis on Sept. 22 when he started the game and played every defensive snap, creating disagreement within the 49ers' organization.

Smith, who had been arrested for driving under the influence two days before that game, subsequently spent five weeks in inpatient substance-abuse rehabilitation. He returned to the roster during the bye week. And despite the glowing praise he received during the week from coaches, Smith's snaps were limited. That was exactly what some sources within the organization promised: that Smith would have to earn his way back into his former role.

"Yeah, I was aware that I wouldn't play too much," Smith said. When asked if he was told why he said, "I don't really call those shots. I put my boots on and play."

Smith good-naturedly acknowledged that he wasn't happy about being limited.

"Not really," he said. "I'm a competitor. I want to be on the field. The season's long, so we'll see how it goes."

Smith didn't appear on the defensive statistics but looked good when he was in the game and said he was prepared to play every snap.

His teammates were happy to see him.

"He's probably the best pass rusher in the NFL," linebacker Ahmad Brooks said. "He makes me a better player. I get to watch what he does in practice, what he does in the game, and try to implement that in my game as much as possible."

Smith said he personally feels happy and healthy, but his return marked the end of the 49ers' five-game winning streak that occurred without him. Oddly, with Smith on the field, the 49ers are 1-3.

"It's definitely something I wish would have worked out differently," he said. "We have to take it in baby steps and hopefully next week get a win."

Ann Killion is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. E-mail: akillion@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @annkillion

Summary: The front office and the coaching staff, this time, were on the same page.  Smith, who had been arrested for driving under the influence two days before that game, subsequently spent five weeks in inpatient substance-abuse rehabilitation.  [...] despite the glowing praise he received during the week from coaches, Smith's snaps were limited.  Smith didn't appear on the defensive statistics but looked good when he was in the game and said he was prepared to play every snap.  Smith said he personally feels happy and healthy, but his return marked the end of the 49ers' five-game winning streak that occurred without him.


You may have been served a coffee with a leaf or maybe even a heart swirled into the top, but have you ever been served one with Hitler, or John Lennon or even a 3D snoopy? Prepare to be amazed (and disappointed forever more with your bland Americano).

We serve up 16 of the best from @george_10g.

Summary: One man in Japan is putting the art into bartender with these foamy creations


Just before July 4 last year, 72-year-old Dorothy Schechter left her San Francisco home with her little brown dachshund like she always did. They started their usual walk to get her newspaper in the Twin Peaks neighborhood, a hilltop where one can see the hearty panorama of San Francisco’s sprawl and, on a clear day, across the bay to Oakland. “All of a sudden, I saw something funny on the ground,” she recalls. Her 7-year-old dog, Oskar, ate what she thought might be stones.

An hour later he was seizing. Eight days later, he was dead.

What Oskar ate turned out to be poisoned meatballs that someone appeared to have deliberately hidden around the popular dog-walking area. Several other dogs got sick. Authorities that July found several meatballs laced with the highly toxic chemical strychnine, interviewed residents and plastered up warning signs. But even after local police were joined by an investigator from the Environmental Protection Agency, officials never named a suspect. “There were no leads on who was doing it,” says Rebecca Katz, director of the city’s animal control department. “The issue seemed to have gone away, so it just sort of fell off the radar.”

Now the meatballs are back.

On Feb. 21, Katz got her first calls reporting suspicious wads of meat in the same neighborhood—one of them from Schechter, a concert pianist who had lived alone with Oskar and now resides with a new dachshund, A.J. She and A.J. were on a walk with a friend and his dog when both animals snapped alert, noses in the air. Her pet tried twice to eat mysterious objects on the ground. “I put them in the palm of my left hand,” she says. “It’s the poisoned meatballs again.”

Authorities have now found dozens of meatballs around the area, hidden in places like the underbrush where dogs are likely to sniff them out before owners are any the wiser. The EPA investigator is on the case, along with two investigators from the San Francisco Police Department and officials from animal control. The meatballs are currently being analyzed to confirm that they also contain strychnine, but a veterinarian who pumped the stomach of a dog sickened after walking in the Twin Peaks area this past weekend suspects those tests will be positive. “There’s one sick person out there that is trying to destroy the calmness of our wonderful area that we live in,” says Schechter. “Somebody has it out for the dogs in this area. … It’s just—why?”

This time, various organizations are offering rewards leading to the arrest and conviction of the “perpetrator(s) of the poisoned meatballs in the Bay Area.” Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman has donated $23,000 to the cause. “We San Franciscans take pride in the dog-friendly nature of our city,” Stoppelman says in a statement. “My dog, Darwin, is a big part of my life. … I can’t imagine losing him to this kind of thoughtless cruelty.”

Katz says animal rights groups have contacted her asking that her department put up cameras around the area where the poisoned meatballs have twice been found, but she says the city cannot constantly film the residential street due to privacy constraints. And even if a local citizen decides to set up their own stake out, there was nearly an eight-month gap between these events, leaving little surety about when the perpetrator might strike again.

When it comes to motive, Katz says that the fact the meatballs were found in the same place may suggest a vendetta against a particular dog or dog-owner rather than a desire to create chaos or panic among the city’s pet owners. “Even if you don’t like a dog or you’re frustrated with a neighbor’s dog peeing on your lawn or anything else, it’s just frightening behavior,” Katz says. “It’s an indicator of some kind of a sociopath that could hurt people as well. It shows a disregard for any kind of life.”

City officials have again put out alerts to the public. Katz says that, this being a second incident, she expects investigators to make an even more “vigorous pursuit” than last time, but so far there are no fingerprints on the meatballs or any strong leads. A city police spokesman says investigators are interviewing possible witnesses and neighbors, as well as searching for anyone who might have video footage that would help the case. Both incidents are being dealt with in a single investigation, though police have not ruled out the possibility of different perpetrators.

After Oskar passed away in July, Schechter says she received hundreds of letters of support from all over the world, and good Samaritans started a fund to help her pay what amounted to $28,000 in veterinarian bills, which forced her to dip into her retirement funds. Oskar, she says, had helped her get through her son’s death in 2009, a decade after her husband passed away. “I have gone through an awful lot of bad things in my life. And I think each one of them tend to make you a little bit stronger,” Schechter says. “You can’t let it get you down. You can’t become embittered by it, because then you’re of no use to anyone else at all. … We have to solve this.”

Summary: Poisoned meatballs have appeared and started sickening pets for the second time in eight months


After getting the snub from Partners HealthCare last fall, Roxbury’s Parcel 3 has a new suitor and it’s a quite a catch: BJ’s Wholesale Club.

The big-box warehouse club is in negotiations to open a 90,000-square-foot store on Tremont Street in Roxbury, bringing a much-needed supermarket to the area. It would be the first major tenant in the long, tortured history of this property that dates back to the 1960s when land was taken for a highway that was never built.

BJ’s is in talks to be the anchor tenant of the $350 million project on Parcel 3 known as Tremont Crossing, which sits on nearly 8 acres across from the Boston police headquarters. It would be the first BJ’s in the city of Boston.

“We just think they are a perfect fit for this project as our retail anchor,” said Barry Feldman, president of Feldco Development Corp.,which is developing the project with the nonprofit Elma Lewis Partners. “A lot of good can come from their presence.”

If a lease agreement with BJ’s can be inked over the next few months, Feldman estimates that a store can open in the spring of 2017. A BJ’s spokeswoman confirmed that the chain is in negotiations, but would not comment further.

Tremont Crossing consists of a 1 million square feet of development, nearly half for retail. Feldman said in addition to BJ’s, the project can handle another 40 to 50 stores and restaurants. The rest of the development will include office, apartments, a hotel, and a museum.

Most recently, Parcel 3 made headlines when former mayor Tom Menino, in the waning weeks of his administration, tried to shame Partners into building a new administrative center and relocate 4,500 nonhospital employees there. The giant healthcare system balked at the idea and instead will be moving to Somerville’s Assembly Row in late 2016. The move apparently would have cost an extra $50 million compared to being in Somerville.


05/16/2014 at 03:05 PM EDT

, there's a new country star going primetime!

will join ABC's talent competition

as an expert, along with singer

The show, hosted by singer-songwriter

, premieres June 22 and will be the first interactive music competition in which viewers can vote via an app to determine if the contestant will advance. The results are given in real time and the singers can see how the voting is going during their performance. Talk about nerve-wracking!

In his role as an expert Paisley, 41, tells PEOPLE, "I'll be kind – probably."

"I think being honest is a key thing, but finding a funny way to say things would be good," he says. "

. I like to laugh at anything that's going on so I'll probably be doing that to my own fault. I'll probably be sticking my foot in my mouth here and there."

Summary: The singer will be an expert on ABC's new reality show, alongside Kesha and Ludacris


FORTUNE — After weeks of speculation and a slimmed-down offer price, Apple AAPL is officially in the music-streaming subscription business.

Apple agreed to acquire Beats Electronic Wednesday afternoon for $2.6 billion in cash along with a future payments of about $400 million, for the headphone maker and its Beats Music subscription service.

“Music is such an important part of all of our lives and holds a special place within our hearts at Apple,” Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said in a statement. “That’s why we have kept investing in music and are bringing together these extraordinary teams so we can continue to create the most innovative music products and services in the world.

Reports of deal talks between the two companies surfaced earlier this month, with Apple originally thought to be paying $3.2 billion for the company founded in 2008 by legendary rapper Dr. Dre and music producer Jimmy Iovine. The target company’s headphones and speakers have increased in popularity over the years and a subscription music service launched earlier this year, priced at $9.99 per month.

MORE: The big winner if Apple buys Beats

Last fall, The Carlyle Group CG invested roughly $500 million in Beats, giving it a valuation of about $1 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Re/Code reports Apple will keep both the Beats hardware and subscription brands intact, and that both Iovine and Dre will join Apple as full-time employees. Apple said it expects the deal to close by the end of the fiscal year, pending regulatory approvals.

Summary: Deal includes $2.6 billion in cash and $400 million in equity for music headphone maker and streaming service.


Peru has been struck by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake.

A major 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck central Peru.

The quake hit 42 kilometres east-northeast of Tambo at a depth of 58.9 kilometers, the US Geological Survey said.

There are no immediate reports of damage or injuries and it's believed there is no tsunami threat to Hawaii.

It follows earthquakes in California and Iceland over the past 12 hours.

A state of emergency was declared in Northern California overnight after a 6.0-magnitude quake rattled residents and caused widespread damage in the scenic Napa valley wine region.

Roughly 120 people were injured, three seriously, and a number of fires were ignited.

It was the largest quake to strike the region in 25 years.

While Icelandic authorities registered a 5.3-magnitude quake at the Bardarbunga volcano in the country’s south east on Sunday, the strongest since activity increased a week ago.

Computer screens show seismic activity from the Bardarbunga volcanic eruption at the Icelandic met office in Reykjavik. (Halldor Kolbeins, AFP)

Do you have any news photos or videos?

Summary: A major 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck central Peru Sunday, US experts said.


FORTUNE — The most interesting thing about Max Levchin’s new venture to help women get pregnant is Glow First. It’s a nonprofit fund offered as a premium service for the mobile app. If Glow is the mobile application that collects copious amounts of information about a prospective mother’s reproductive health to help her get pregnant naturally, Glow First promises to help women pay for the science when nature doesn’t work on its own.

Or, as Levchin said during a recent visit to Fortune’s New York offices, it’s an “opt-in mutual health financial product.” Yeah. That. It’s a truly novel idea.

Levchin, who founded both PayPal EBAY and Slide, has teamed with former Google GOOG executive Mike Huang to launch Glow, a fertility app that, they believe, goes a step beyond apps available to consumers today. They hope to be able to amass enough data about women’s menstrual cycles, sexual behavior, mood, and diet that they can help any woman know exactly when to conceive, warn her about early problems like potential endometriosis, and over time, promote better health care for women in general by collecting large amounts of information that hasn’t been collected before.

MORE: What Ashton got right in ‘Jobs’

That’s the idea that has drawn attention and investors: On August 8, Glow announced $6 million in funding from Founders’ Fund and Andreessen Horowitz.

But roughly 11% of women aged 15-44 have trouble getting pregnant, according to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). And insurance coverage for infertility treatments is spotty at best in the U.S. It can get expensive fast: One round of in vitro fertilization can cost $12,000-$15,000. So Levchin and Huang have set up Glow First as a very simple insurance product to help offset that cost.

Here’s how it works: Women planning to conceive can apply to sign up for the program. Once accepted they agree to pay $50 per month for 10 months — and to keep an above-average amount of engagement on the Glow app, which invites users to track health-related signals every day. These payments will enter a pool along with payments from other women who signed up at the same time. Levchin and Huang are betting that most couples will conceive naturally within the 10-month time frame, and their economic contributions will count as tax-deductible donations to the pool. After 10 months, the pool will be split among any women who aren’t yet pregnant to be used toward medical intervention. (You don’t just walk with the cash; Glow First will pay your infertility clinic once you submit proof of initial screening.)

MORE: Can social media fix the Washington Post?

Of course, it’ll be a great recruitment tool for the company; the more data women enter about their reproductive cycles — and Glow gets personal: It asks about the sexual positions couples use while attempting to conceive, for example — the better Glow will work as Levchin, Huang, and the team apply machine-learning to the information to develop a deeper understanding of how to advise future users on how and when to conceive.

For any individual who signs up, there will be a bit of luck involved; the size of a pool will depend on the number of folks who sign up — and if more folks have trouble conceiving in a particular pool, there will be less money available to split among them at the end of the period. But Levchin, a big data disciple, says that as it scales up, the program will offer more benefit to participants — and it will pay for itself.

In the interim, he has made a million-dollar donation to help ensure that the earliest participants will still get some financial help beyond their individual contributions if they have trouble conceiving. And in the case that they do, they’ll have the rich karmic reward inherent in helping those less fortunate.

Summary: Glow, a fertility app, is linked to a nonprofit fund to help women get IVF.


Anne Milne carries the look of the persecuted. She sighs and groans as Brian, her husband, a pile of carefully rolled cigarettes beside him, talks of his ideas. She had sounded pained to hear from me when I called. 'I had thought it was all over,' she told me later, in their conservatory. They are, respectively, secretary and chairman of Tiree Art Enterprises.

As such, the Milnes are ultimately responsible for An Turas, the 'shelter' built on the pier at Scarinish. This piece of art - a long corridor of white walls, followed by a wooden bridge and a glass box - has received acclaim from around the country, and disapprobation from the Milne's fellow islanders.

It is clear that while Brian, the art teacher at Tiree high school, is enjoying the company of the artists and architects who have travelled across a small slice of the Atlantic to see An Turas, Anne, who works at the local bank, has been troubled by what the neighbours say. For her, it seems, the opinions of her peers weigh heavily.

An Turas was unveiled last year and quickly shortlisted for the Stirling Prize before going on to win the annual award of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland.

I am late into this story but have just seen An Turas for the first time. If you've been to Tiree, you will know this is a machair island, with vast skies, shell-white beaches and water whipped white by a wind as constant as the black rock. It is, I think, perfectly suited to modern architecture.

To walk on the island just now is to disturb the endless geese and snipe that winter here. The houses, with their thick white walls and, in many cases, tar roofs, reek of the fires within. Land Rovers travel the beaches in search of the few bits of driftwood that lie there, bored through by sea-worm. The minister's sermon was on 1 Samuel 15, in which God disowns Saul for showing mercy to his enemies.

An Turas plays with these elements. It has the two white walls that match the houses. Its bridge is roofed in tar. The glass box breaks through a dry-stone dyke and opens on to the full sweep of Gott Bay. As I walked along its passageway, I realised that this was one of those pieces of art that works so well that it touches all the earlier experiences and accentuates them. It feels perfect, in that way the Angel of the North, up on its hill above Gateshead, feels perfect when you glance up at it from the train to London.

Yet, there is no shortage of disdain for An Turas on Tiree. Angus MacLean, former chairman of the Tiree and CollGaelic Partnership, has been quoted as saying it is a monstrosity. 'I don't see any sense to the thing at all,' he told a ne wspaper. 'It cost a lot of money to produce and it doesn't fit in. All the people I speak to feel the same. I just won't go near it. It is supposed to be a shelter, but it isn't even suitable for that purpose.'

Being a modernist in such places is always difficult. Apart from conservative reactions like that of MacLean, there are issues of deprivation to deal with. The criticism that has stung the Milnes the most has been local disgust at £100,000 of lottery money being spent on a 'useless' piece of art at a time when the community was struggling to raise funds for a new stock mart and a new hall. Buy food from Scarnish Co-op without a loyalty card and you'll be asked if you are willing to donate the credit to the hall.

This is understandable. A hall is absolutely crucial to a rural community such as Tiree's, where the places to socialise are few and far between. And if you believe that islands like Tiree have to exist independently of tourism, then the mart is equally important. It is also a misplaced criticism. The money spent on An Turas could never have been used for such things. It came from the Scottish Arts Council's Lottery Fund. If An Turas hadn't received the cash, it would have gone elsewhere. Money for the mart and hall has since been found.

The Milnes should now stand proud, for they have done something remarkable. These days, not damaging the Highlands and Islands has become synonymous with not touching them, of trying to preserve them as they were. So the ancients could build their brochs, and the crofters their blackhouses, but we must not mark the landscape in response to the way it touches us. These days we no longer need to protect ourselves from invasion, nor struggle quite so torturously on the land, but that doesn't mean in a landscape this exquisite we should not meet it with the best we have.

Several years ago a poll was conducted of Tiree's islanders, asking what they thought of Tiree Art Enterprises. Funnily enough, people said they should do more. Well, here it is: An Turas, 'a journey' in Gaelic, a 'shelter' exposed over half its length to a constantly changing sky.

It has reminded me of what I dream of for my native Highland landscape, imaginations that reach for the horizons. I only hope that the roasting the Milnes have received will allow the ground to cool for others to follow.

Summary: Ruaridh Nicoll: Tiree's arts shelter is no monstrosity. It's a fine piece of architecture perfectly suited to the island.


You enter the 2005 Turner prize exhibition, which opens at Tate Britain today, to be confronted by the wall of an old shed. Taking up a good part of Simon Starling's installation, the building once stood on the banks of the Rhine before the artist dismantled it, built a traditional boat from the wood, and used the vessel to transport the rest of the shed downstream to Basel, where the whole thing was put back together again for an exhibition. There is an impeccable, absurd logic to Starling's work, which owes as much to Raymond Roussel or to Borges as it does, in this case, to someone like Gordon Matta-Clark, who used to saw up buildings in his art.

There's no doubt that old, weathered objects like this, transferred to the gallery, have their appeal; think of Tracey Emin's former beach hut, or the prow of an old boat once displayed by Jannis Kounellis. But in the end, the various reasons why an artist translocated them are often more interesting than the objects themselves, unless they have been transformed in an interesting way, as Matta-Clark did. Other good examples are Cornelia Parker's exploded shed and contents in her 1991 Cold Dark Matter, and Mike Nelson's bunker buried under an indoor sand dune, shown in Oxford last year.

Back-story is everything in Simon Starling's work, and his Shedboatshed (Mobile Architecture No 2) has another story the artist doesn't tell us. Eventually bought by the Kunstmuseum in Basel, Shedboatshed was presumably dismantled in Switzerland, its parts numbered, padded, crated and then transported to Tate Britain in a big truck, where the piece was put back together again. Much care, presumably, was taken not to disturb the desiccated scraps of ivy clinging to its exterior wall, and in the placement of the odds and ends that lie about in its dim interior. But this story, of the passage of an artwork, stays untold.

Stories are one thing, art another. The work I like best here consists of five identical photographs of an open-cast platinum mine in South Africa. The platinum prints have been printed using exactly the amount of metal (about a 10th of an ounce) that is derived from one tonne of unpurified ore dug from the mine. This is an illuminating discovery, but once the anecdote has been told, what's left? What is it that makes one work by this artist better than any other: a good story, or the effort involved in carrying out his self-appointed tasks?

Darren Almond's If I Had You is a sophisticated, unified experience. The first thing that attracts me is the use of sound: the slightly off-key piano melody, taken from an album by Richard James (the Aphex Twin), the sound of leather-soled shoes stepping and sliding on a ballroom floor, the creaking noise of an illuminated windmill turning on Blackpool Promenade. On one screen Almond's grandmother, who honeymooned in Blackpool and hadn't returned since her husband's death, sits lost in thought. On another screen the camera follows a couple's shoes as they dance around the ballroom. High on another wall, the sails of the windmill turn in the Lancashire night, and on yet another screen water showers jerkily from a garden fountain.

It is all pretty self-explanatory, and we follow the elements - the repeated musical phrase, the old woman's introspective expression, the revolving windmill, the water spouting, the turning dancers, the sound of their steps going from speaker to speaker - as though we were inside a mechanical music box, or trapped in the loop of a nostalgic reverie. I admire the sophistication and skill Almond brings to his work, and the inherent difficulties of the subjects he deals with. Currently, Almond's Ozwiecim March 1997 is being shown in Universal Experience at the Hayward Gallery in London. In that work, grainy footage of people waiting at bus stops on the way to the former Auschwitz concentration camp is accompanied by sombre music by Arvo Part. Almond's problem is that he strays close to emotional manipulation, and If I Had You verges on the maudlin.

It takes a long time for a painter to find his or her individual voice, especially if it is a voice trying to speak in several different registers. Gillian Carnegie has installed her paintings extremely well, but I feel there are still a few too many. This may be because few are strong enough individually. She moves from still life to landscape, then to the figure and to abstraction, and back again, adjusting her touch as she goes. Larger and smaller versions of the same subject - a tree in autumn, say - face one another. Such a subject might seem passé. The tree is skeletal, yet the swags and patches of leaves are delivered as fat, brushy swerves and vectors, escaping their descriptive function and clotting on the painting's surface. There is a nice awkwardness about this. Somewhere in the middle of these near-identical paintings is the same emphatic vertical brushstroke - declaring itself as, perhaps, a final mark, perhaps even a cancellation of the image she has been building up so carefully.

Two other small paintings face one another down the length of the gallery. Both depict a woman's arse, proffered to the viewer. This is a good joke. Perhaps, as the exhibition guide tells us, she wants us to think of Courbet's L'Origine du Monde, his notorious painting of a woman's thighs and genitals; but it seems to me more a provocative rejoinder to painters such as Luc Tuymans and John Currin.

Something of Courbet's palette-knifed touch gets into a large, close-toned yellow painting of a sun-struck garden avenue; maybe she also wants us to remember the jagged trowellings of abstract expressionist Clifford Still, just as her black-on-black square paintings of the trunks and boles of trees are in part comments on Kasimir Malevich's Black Square. But saying that these big, thick, lumpy, wrinkling nods to the Russian suprematist "subvert the macho tradition of the monochrome", as Tate curator Lizzie Carey-Thomas has it, is, frankly, wrong. Was Malevich macho? What is so masculine about the monochrome?

Carnegie is intelligent and talented. Her work is full of painterly irony, quotation and doubt about what a "signature style" might mean for her. This, I think, is her real subject. In a few years she will be able to fill a room with killer paintings, and have them really playing against one another.

Jim Lambie's The Kinks is the final work in this year's Turner. Looking at the installation is like sticking your finger in a power socket. It is arresting, quite mad and pretty funky - and hard not to like, on account of its wild energy. The silver and black taped floor is a sort of disco version of Kenneth Martin's Chance and Order paintings, or 1970s Jasper Johns (who took a similar pattern from a detail of a bedspread in an Edvard Munch painting), but the references don't get us very far. I like the way the silver tape throws shards of light up the gallery walls and makes the whole floor float. In a sense, all the artists here take an idea too far.

Lambie always overdoes it, which I guess is part of the point. A gigantic finch stands on a mirrored plinth, with paint drooled all over the bird, down the mirror and on to the floor, where it forms an ugly puddle. The bird turns to look at a sort of Rorschach blot on the wall behind it. Other birds - which I imagine are blown-up versions of cheap, inaccurate ornithological knick-knacks - occupy other parts of the room. These, too, have been dribbled and sprayed with colour. I wish Lambie would do something less all-consumingly funky, but I think he's enjoying himself too much, and seeing how far he can go.

You feel like a cartoon in here. It's a bit of a relief, coming after Starling, Almond and Carnegie. Lambie's theatricality is a good strategy, too, because he almost makes you forget what came before. It's a hard act to follow, a worse one to precede. But perhaps dizzying theatricality is all it is.

· The Turner prize 2005, sponsored by Gordon's Gin, is at Tate Britain, London SW1 (020-7887 8888), until January 22. The winner will be announced on December 5

Summary: Adrian Searle reviews the four artists in the Turner prize show.


The Frick Collection in New York doesn't do many shows. But those it does are apt to be exemplary, and none more so than its present one: Goya's Last Works, a shapely group of some 50 paintings, drawings and etchings from the closing years of the great man's life. Small the show may be, but it is the first of its kind, unremittingly fascinating, and even those who think they know Goya intimately will be surprised by it.

Everyone knows the middle-aged Goya. Of him, there were several. One was the great ironist who etched the series of Caprichos, those corrosive little satires on Spanish authority, superstition and folly. Another, the fan of bullfights who left the Tauromaquia etchings as one of the benchmarks of popular Spanish identity. A third, the portraitist who painted some of the most assertive and complex images of female beauty (the Majas, clothed and naked) and vulnerability (the Condesa de Chinchon) in all European art, along with an extraordinary gallery of closely scrutinised intellectuals, politicians, priests, bluebloods and Bourbon royals. A fourth, the political artist who created that never-surpassed indictment of wartime cruelty, The Third of May, 1814, and its related etchings, the Disasters of War, provoked by Napoleon's occupation of Spain and the popular resistance it engendered.

The work of his last years, however, is much less well-known. Goya was a tough bird and he lived to a great age. The average life expectancy of a Spanish farmworker in the early 1800s was about 40. Born in 1746, Goya survived until 1828, dying at 82 - an almost incredible longevity. What was more, he kept on drawing and painting right up to the end. Almost all his life was spent in Spain, except for a youthful trip to Italy (of which very little is known) and his last four years, 1824-28, which he passed as an elderly expatriate on the French side of the Pyrenees, in Bordeaux.

What was he doing in France? Sheltering. Trying to find a modicum of political calm. His homeland had been crazy for a long time: riven and deranged by the Napoleonic occupation and the desperate resistance it provoked, wrecked again by the policies of El Deseado, "the one we long for", as Spanish proles and aristocrats called the obstinately repressive, paranoid Bourbon tyrant Ferdinand VII, who eventually regained the throne in 1823. Ferdinand abolished the new constitution, brought back the Inquisition, and launched witch hunts against Spanish liberals of all stripes. Goya feared he would be among them, though he was still officially a salaried court painter. He took refuge with a friend, and then - when Ferdinand, under pressure from the French and English, declared a brief amnesty for constitutional supporters in 1824 - he came out of seclusion and asked the king to let him go to a French spa to take the waters.

Permission granted. But Goya never went to the spa. Once safely over the Pyrenees, he headed straight for Bordeaux, to touch base with the growing colony of liberal Spanish exiles there. It included an old friend, the writer Leandro Moratin, who reported that Goya was "deaf, old, awkward and weak", without a word of French, but "so happy and anxious to see the world".

He could see it but not hear it; Goya had been deaf as a stone for 30 years. He also saw Paris briefly (though he had no contact with its artists, who included some of his admirers, such as Eugene Delacroix), but soon he was settled back in Bordeaux. There he was joined by his loyal but rather crabby companion of earlier days in Madrid, Leocadia Zorilla, and her two children. And he settled down to work.

There was nothing routine about what he produced. Its emblem was one piercing drawing in black crayon, which depicts an old man, a time-damaged patriarch with a long white beard, hobbling forward on two sticks, forging ahead. "Aun aprendo," Goya's hand inscribes above him: "I am still learning." And so he was, ceaselessly, indefatigably. There are, in all, 123 known surviving crayon sketches from his time in Bordeaux - about an eighth of his known drawings. Like the rest of his graphic work they fall into several categories, but few seem to be studies for eventual paintings.

First, there were things he saw on the streets of Bordeaux, sights that snagged his attention by their pathos or oddity - a legless beggar sitting in a clumsy wheelchair; a man on roller skates with another on a velocipede in the background; a mild, bewildered-looking giantess towering above spectators at a town fair. Then there were the drawings that recorded his horrified and sympathetic interest in something that had recurred in his work since the 1790s: the image and behaviour of the mad, society's tormented outcasts behind bars. Some of these - like Loco Furioso (Raging Lunatic), the huge eye-rolling figure pinioned in a sack, or Gimiendo y Llorando (Weeping and Wailing), a kneeling prisoner with his arms flung out in reminiscence of the man in the white shirt who was about to be executed in The Third of May - are among the most powerful pleas on behalf of victims this great, sardonic humanitarian ever made.

There are witches and monsters, too, the witches persecuting harmless young women, the monsters including an extremely weird flying dog - a mastiff with a nail-studded collar, the webbed back feet of a goose and hairy wings - diving out of the sky like some monstrous Stuka on the attack. It has what seems to be an open book tied to its back. (As the excellent catalogue, by the art historians Jonathan Brown and Susan Galassi, says: "The significance of this drawing has never been ascertained." One may bet that it never will be.) The most memorable drawing in the show, for many, will be Goya's vision of an old man grinning on a rope swing, horny feet sticking out, slicing through space like a crazy Zen patriarch - his inner self letting fly, one feels, unaffected by age.

One of the startling facts of Goya's last years was that, despite his age and debility, he was not only open to new media but enthusiastic about trying them. One of these was lithography, the reproduction of an image by drawing it directly on smooth limestone. He was a master of etching but lithography was novel: it had been invented only some 20 years before by a Munich playwright, Aloys Senefelder, then picked up by a Spaniard named José Maria Cardano, who introduced Goya to it. The result was a series of images of bullfights, collectively called The Bulls of Bordeaux. Goya had hopes of sales. He seems to have approached lithography as though it were a sort of painting, propping the heavy slabs of stone upright on an easel rather than working on them horizontally, as one would on a copper plate for etching. But although some of these tangled, clotted masses of light and dark, with their lumpish humans and wretched, dying animals, are among the best prints he ever made, they didn't sell. Folkloric Spain wasn't fashionable yet, the French were not interested in such sub-Pyrenean brutalities as the corrida, whereas the Spanish expatriates in Bordeaux tended to be afrancesados, persons of refined taste and Enlightenment principles for whom the bullfight represented exactly the gross, populist side of Spain they were glad to have left behind.

His body was failing him. "I've no more sight," he wrote to a Spanish friend in 1825. "No hand, no pen, nor inkwell, I lack everything - all I've got left is will." He was short of money, and friends proposed that he should make himself some by doing a new issue of the Caprichos, but Goya refused to compromise himself by repetition.

Instead he spoke of something entirely new in his work: miniatures on ivory. Not the licked, frozen, highly detailed miniatures one associates with the period, but expressive ones, tiny but broadly brushed relative to their surface, full of accidents, blots and runs, "of a kind I've never seen before, done entirely with the point of a brush". He said he had finished about 40 of these. Not that many survive, but the Frick show is by far the largest group of them that has ever been exhibited. And they are wonderful, charged with all the sensuality and terror of his larger works, but rarely more than three inches square, and painted in carbon black and dilute watercolour on little plaques of ivory. One is enchanted by their spontaneity - how a mere drip of paint, blotted and diluted, becomes a face, or the looming mass of a majo's cloak, or the engulfing shadow behind a figure.

These miniatures are tiny in size but large in scale, and they contain some of the most beautiful feats of controlled chance that would be seen in art until the 20th century. They show that, almost to the end of his life, to paint and to invent were, for Goya, the same.

· Goya's Last Works is at the Frick Collection, New York, until May 14.Details: 001 212-288-0700.

Summary: He was old, deaf and virtually broke. But a new exhibition of Goya's last works shows that nothing could dampen his creative spirit, writes Robert Hughes.


It was bound to happen.

Rich Wilkerson Jr., the pastor who grabbed international headlines when he

, is getting his own reality show on the Oxygen Network.

, will star the 30-year-old pastor and his wife, DawnCheré and will be produced by E's

The sudden attention has mystified Wilkerson, who bears more than a passing resemblance to

"I never expected that anyone would care who performed the ceremony," he says. "Celebrities get married all the time and no one knows who their pastor is. I didn't tell anyone I was doing the wedding; I just went to Italy and did it. And then everything started moving really fast."

PEOPLE recently spent a day with Wilkerson to learn more about the Miami pastor who has celebrities on speed dial – but insists that his heart is really about helping those in need. "The wedding and now the reality show has given me a platform to give my message of redemption, which is for all people," he says. "That's why I'm here."

In a rough neighborhood of Miami Gardens, the sprawling campus of Trinity Church sits alongside strip malls and blue-collar shops. The building could clearly use some repair, but it has become the center of the community.

Every Tuesday night, Wilkerson, 30, leads

, (nicknamed "the Vous"), the church's young adult ministry. Seven years ago, Wilkerson decided to reach out to a younger crowd. His first service had 12 people; it now has more than 1,100.

It has the vibe of a hip Miami club: live rap music, contemporary singers, and an attractive, ethnically-diverse crowd dancing in the aisles. But when it's time for Wilkerson to preach, he tackles the tough issues, giving clear advice on everything from racism to drugs and sex, and he doesn't shy away from preaching about sin and repentance.

"I want to reach people who have given up, who are out of hope," he says. "I want to talk to people who haven't felt comfortable in church. But I'm going to tell the truth. And sometimes the truth isn't easy."

DawnChere Wilkerson, Kanye West and Rich Wilkerson

It was at the Vous that he first met West and Kardashian about two years ago.

"One night, I got a text [from a friend of Kanye's] that he was going to bring Kanye to church," says Wilkerson. "We hung out and chatted. He flew back into town the following week and came to church. The week after that, he and Kim flew in from New York just to come to church."

"It began a relationship; we started emailing and calling each other. We collaborated on a few things: art, fashion, music, Jesus. He invited me to write a few things for his tour, and I've been able to counsel him on a few things."

Wilkerson is used to being asked about some of the couple's more controversial moments. "I don't have to agree with everything that someone does to love them," says Wilkerson. "I think that's actually a problem within the church: everyone wants to judge everyone else. My job isn't to judge anyone. I tell the truth if I'm asked, and we may disagree, but we're still friends. Kanye knows what my standards are. There's a respect there."

When they asked him to officiate the wedding, Wilkerson readily agreed. "I got to give my message," he says. "They wanted a Christian wedding, and wanted me to talk about Jesus. It wasn't a message of hate and judgment; it was a message of hope and love. Kim and Kanye have both told me that they're followers of Jesus; we're on the journey together as friends. I believe in them, and I believe in their marriage."

The wedding instantly made Wilkerson a local celebrity. Sitting with PEOPLE at Lagniappe, a funky Miami barbecue joint and wine bar, it's hard not to notice the four young women staring at him from the next table. Finally, one of the approaches.

"Is your name Rich?" she asks. "Will you take a picture with us?" He sheepishly complies, and the women immediately tag him on Instagram.

It's that notoriety that lead networks and production companies to take an interest in a reality show. "I don't watch a lot of reality TV," says Wilkerson. "But I'm not against it. Love it or hate it, reality TV has become the language of our culture. And I believe that there's a place for Christians to show that this is who we are, this is what we believe, and we're not all sitting in judgment of other people. It's a chance for me to show the love of Jesus Christ. It's a platform."

And what can viewers expect?

"There's a lot of my life that is hilarious," he says. "But there's also a lot that is very serious. We have people in our church who are facing difficult things. Also, my wife and I are trying to have children, and it hasn't happened yet. Obviously, if the show causes stress in our marriage, we'd stop doing it, but I think we're both on the same page."

One of Wilkerson's chief concerns: how a reality show will affect his ministry. "There are people who will think that I'm exploiting my celebrity friends for my own gain," he says. "I don't want anyone to think that. I am really looking for ways to share some good news with as many people as possible. If I don't do that, what's the point?"

And if more celebs show up at the church? "They'll be welcome here," he says. "But they're no more welcome and no more important than the homeless guy who walks in. I want to minister to the famous and the nameless. Everyone is welcome at our church. And it'll stay that way."

DawnChere Wilkerson, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian and Rich Wilkerson

Summary: The Miami pastor will take his message to the Oxygen network


It is possible to stop the spread of Ebola, the virus that has decimated the West African economy and caused businesses in Liberia to scramble to save their workers. Two African countries, Senegal and Nigeria, have successfully contained the deadly disease within their borders. Both had extraordinarily tight monitoring and strict communication between federal leaders and local communities. Now that the virus has reached America’s heartland (and some of our biggest industries), how does the U.S. response compare to the two successful nations?

Senegal Number of confirmed cases: 1 Number of deaths: 0

Nigeria Number of confirmed cases: 20 Number of deaths: 12

U.S. Number of confirmed cases: 3 Number of deaths: 1

Senegal: Patient initially sought care August 18 but did not disclose travel history. He continued as an outpatient until August 25, receiving intravenous fluids and other symptomatic treatment. On August 26, he was admitted to a specialized hospital for Ebola testing.

Nigeria: Lone traveler enters from Liberia on July 20. Patient collapsed in the arrival hall of Lagos airport with symptoms of Ebola. Traveler was admitted to a private hospital and confirmed to have Ebola.

U.S.: Lone traveler enters from Liberia on September 20. He seeks treatment at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital September 24, discloses travel history, and is sent home with antibiotics. He returned two days later in an ambulance and tested positive for Ebola. He was moved to an isolation ward within the hospital not specially designated to care for the Ebola disease.

Senegal: In total, 67 contacts were identified: 34 residents of the home where the patient stayed and 33 health care workers. All contacts, including health care workers, were subjected to 21-day monitoring. This included in-home voluntary quarantine. They were seen twice daily by Red Cross volunteers. Symptoms and temperatures were recorded twice daily. Food was provided.

Some healthcare workers resisted monitoring by Red Cross volunteers. Alternative solutions were sought, including having the local hospital monitor healthcare workers. This resulted in increased compliance. All 67 contacts completed the 21-day follow-up. The single confirmed case survived.

Nigeria: Patient exposed 72 people at the airport and hospital. In total, 894 contacts were identified for all the cases. About 18,500 face-to-face visits were conducted by contact tracers. Eleven patients were discharged, and eight died.

U.S.: 48 initial contacts were tracked, including some healthcare workers that came in contact to the original patient before he was quarantined. Other staff caring for the first patient after quarantine were not tracked until after a second person, a nurse, tested positive for Ebola. Then 70 workers in contact with the original patient were added to the tracking list. So far, one contact from the second patient has been added to the tracking list. Further contacts are unfolding. First patient has died. Today, a third patient was identified.

Senegal: Before the first confirmed case, the Senegal Ministry of Health had been training health care staff on infection control, laboratory testing, case investigation, and contact tracing, with an oversight committee organized for response. “Prompt notification through an interagency collaboration in Guinea was crucial in this case because the patient did not report recent travel or contact with an Ebola patient,” says a study on the CDC’s website.

Nigeria: The Federal Ministry of Health with guidance from Nigeria Centre for Disease Control declared an Ebola emergency when the first man was admitted. On July 23, the Federal Ministry of Health, with the Lagos State government, activated an Ebola Incident Management Center as a precursor the current systems in place. Government put in an emergency presidential decree that enabled official to access mobile phone records and use otherwise unauthorized law-enforcement agencies. Houses were disinfected immediately, according to the Financial Times.

At Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit last week, Melinda Gates explained how a Gates Foundation-funded polio clinic was retrofitted to handle Ebola cases, which she credited to helping keep the numbers in that country low.

U.S.: Authorities followed-up with people in the first patient’s apartment complex three days after he was admitted into the hospital. Schools with children that had direct contact to the patient were notified and cleaned. After the second patient tested positive, authorities sent reverse 911 phone calls to houses within a four block radius of the patient. No national reinforcement measures have been taken. The Texas Task Force on Infectious Disease Preparedness and Response has its first meeting scheduled for October 23, nearly a month after the first Ebola case enters the state.

Summary: Two African countries have successfully contained Ebola. How does the U.S. reaction compare to their strategies?


CALAIS, Maine — Even the thrift shop in this remote city along the Canadian border is going out of business.

Storefronts sit eerily vacant on Main Street; the downtown methadone clinic is one of the few businesses attracting activity. Joe Rosebush, the thrift store owner, said his friends have found syringes in parks and even he, a retired minister in his 60s, knows how to get “rock cocaine.”

He said he plans to pack up his camper and leave for good “as soon as I can.”

Calais exists on the edge of the US economy, but at the center of a debate over the reach of the economic recovery and the shift in policies as conditions broadly improve. Several states, including Massachusetts, have tightened work requirements for receiving public assistance.

Here in Maine, Governor Paul LePage, a first-term Republican locked in a tough reelection campaign, allowed a federal waiver to expire earlier this year. That, in turn, allows Maine to reinstate requirements that people work or volunteer at least 20 hours a week to qualify for food stamps.

LePage noted that Maine has more jobs than a few years ago, and said that the stricter rules will help rein in a generation of Mainers who have grown “dependent on government handouts.”

Most people who receive food stamps have jobs, albeit low-paying ones, and LePage’s move affects about 12,000 people in the state. For those in Calais (pronounced Cal-las), a remote city of 3,000, meeting the work requirements could prove particularly challenging because jobs are so scarce.

Calais was once a booming center for forestry and paper mills; today just one pulping mill remains. The unemployment rate, 9 percent, is nearly double the state average. Median worker earnings are just $24,000, according to the US Census. One in five families with children live in poverty. Nearly one in four people receive food stamps.

Talk to anyone in town, from the mayor to a waitress, and they will say the prospects for economic revival are grim. But in dozens of interviews, most residents said they support the “work for food stamps” plan.

At the Irene Chadbourne Ecumenical Food Pantry on Main Street in Calais, which gives food to more than 500 households a year, many clients said the social service system, and food stamps in particular, is plagued with abuse.

Jean Wade, in her 50s, said she lives modestly on disability payments. As she carried bags of food to her car one recent morning, she said that too many young people in the area, including her own son, are willing to accept food stamps and work under the table.

“They sneak around doing odd jobs and getting paid.” she said. “We need to be whipped into shape.”

Paula Seeley, 51, accompanied her elderly brother-in-law to the food pantry. She said Walmart is hiring, yet many young people won’t apply for jobs. She and her husband moved to the area from Greater Boston several years ago to retire early. She also supports the requirement to work or volunteer.

“It’s the ones that are able to work, and don’t work, and don’t have kids,” she said. “Go get a job!”

The food pantry operates from a historic house on Main Street and, according to its data, about 70 percent of the people it serves also receive food stamps. About one-third of the clients are under age 18. Run by a coalition of church groups, it recently started a program to give schoolchildren who receive federally subsidized lunches backpacks filled with fruit, vegetables, and other food every Friday to help ensure they get healthy meals over the weekend.

Arthur Carter, the pantry’s 81-year-old director, said his typical client earns about $13,000 a year. But he, too, supports work requirements for food stamps.

“To be very blunt about it,” he said, “there’s a hell of a lot of work to do around here, and we could use volunteers.”

Carter, like many Calais residents, chose to retire in this remote corner of Maine because of its natural beauty and affordability. The town is situated along the St. Croix River, where salt water meets fresh and the tide rises and falls more than 20 feet, the greatest rise and fall in the continental United States. Winnebagos fill the roadways. About 20 percent of the Washington County population is 65 or older, compared with about 13 percent nationally.

“If you’re coming here, you bring your own income,” Carter said. “You’re not going to get one here.”

Mayor Marianne Moore said the Calais economy is worse than it was just a few years ago, when federal stimulus dollars helped keep people and industry afloat with extended unemployment benefits and other programs.

Recently, a pharmacy on Main Street closed after more than 60 years in business.

“We’re still limping, still on crutches trying to get through it,” she said of the recession.

Moore, who retired here 13 years ago from Texas, said she, too, supports the work requirement for food stamps. “They could find work,” she said. “They could go get a job.”

Fred Field for The Boston Globe

People waited on benches for their turn at the Irene Chadbourne Ecumenical Food Pantry on Main Street in Calais, Maine.

Recently, the area’s only remaining paper pulp plant, Woodland Pulp, just outside Calais, said it would hire 80 workers when it creates a new bathroom tissue division. Moore said the local community college had openings to train 40 workers for those jobs; 140 people applied.

As plants have closed in the past decade, the area has become infamous for abuse of prescription painkillers like Oxycontin, known as “hillbilly heroin.” The methadone clinic seems like one of the few operations with a steady business downtown.

Second Baptist Church is within walking distance of the clinic. Pastor Matt Burden, 32, said he didn’t want to support someone using food stamps so that they have income for drugs, but he wanted to help people in the throes of addiction.

“I don’t want to be in the place where I’m taking necessary food away from people who need it,” he said. But when drugs are involved, he added, “that’s much harder to figure out.”

At the food pantry, Pam Morehouse of Baileyville, a village near Calais, hauled a wagon with bags of free food — apples, potatoes, cereal — to a worn minivan where her 73-year-old mother waited.

Morehouse was laid off several years ago from a mill where she had worked for nearly three decades. Now in her 50s, she said she can’t find full-time work. She earns less than $10,000 a year working part time at a nearby woolen mill.

Two of her adult children live at home and hold minimum wage jobs, one at Dunkin’ Donuts and the other at an Irving gas station. Another daughter, 15, is in school.

Together, they earn too much to qualify for food stamps, but not enough to avoid trips to the pantry after paying the mortgage, heating costs, and other bills.

More people need help, she said as tears welled in her eyes, not fewer.

“It makes me angry the system can’t be there for someone who is trying,” she said. “I’m trying to live.”

Summary: Calais, Maine exists on the edge of the US economy, but at the center of the debate over the reach of the economic recovery and a shift in policies as conditions broadly improve.


Liam Hemsworth, Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson

11/16/2014 AT 02:15 PM EST

She's certainly a considerate one – or so she thinks. Sure, she ate a sandwich and then didn't brush her teeth before filming a big kiss with costar

, but, she said Saturday at a press conference for

, "I gave him fair warning."

Not according to her scene partner. As Hemsworth

earlier, "Any time I had to kiss Jennifer was pretty uncomfortable. When you look at it on the outside it looks like a great picture. She's one of my best friends. I love her. But if we had a kissing scene, she would make a point of eating garlic or tuna fish or something that was disgusting."

All kidding aside, the Oscar winner does credit Hemsworth with teaching her to have more of a backbone.

"I am a wimp about standing up for myself," the 24-year-old actress told PEOPLE at the press conference in Manhattan, saying Hemsworth "taught me how to stand up for myself," she said. "I would always be like, 'Please like me! Please like me!' "

"Maybe not with this movie," she joked. "Not since

"But there were times when I was really bad about that," Lawrence continued. "It's my biggest weakness – with negotiating, or even with people. Liam is always fair, he is always kind, he is always strong. He's teaching me to toughen up a little bit and it's important. I need that."

movies over the years, she said she

, 22, and Hemsworth, 24.

"Liam is the most wonderful, lovable, just family-oriented sweet, hilarious [guy]," she said. "I guess the biggest surprise is that I would never expect to ever have a man this good-looking ever be my best friend. I never knew that those things could happen."

When he returned the compliment, saying how "she has never changed" and is "a great actress because she adapts to situations," she laughed and said, "This is the best press conference ever!"

In true JLaw fashion, she also joked about taking a selfie in a meadow during shooting "while I was peeing in it." But the conversation turned serious as she explained how surrounding herself "with 'no' people" has kept her grounded amid her international stardom.

"I have an amazing group of friends who are not in the business, who I trust. I have been friends with them for years," she said. "They will tell me, 'Stop doing that' or 'You look terrible.' "

When it comes to her fame, she said, "I don't feel any different. But the way people look at you feels alienated and odd. So I surround myself with people who don't fake laugh at my jokes."

chimed in to compare Lawrence to her fearless character, Katniss Everdeen.

"Katniss doesn't have any ego and neither does Jennifer. The reason why she's so compelling to an audience is because she's true to herself and doesn't suffer the bulls--- or superficial elements," Dormer said. "That's why people look up to her. She's a great role model. So is Katniss."

opens in theaters Nov. 21.

Summary: The Mockingjay – Part 1 star says she can't believe that "a man this good looking could ever be my best friend"


Over the course of two decades of playing music professionally, the Gibson Brothers have gained recognition not only as one of the premier groups in bluegrass, but as an exemplar of the brother harmony tradition. Now the Gibsons are about to pay tribute to that legacy; in February, they’ll put out an album of songs from brother acts both famous (Everlys, Louvins, Monroes) and lesser-known (Church Brothers, Blue Sky Boys) titled, simply, “Brotherhood.” Saturday, they’ll preview the album in concert. As he headed back to the Northeast with brother Eric and band member Mike Barber from a tour date in North Carolina, Leigh Gibson talked to the Globe about the new record and the phenomenon of brother harmony.

Q. At the Boston Bluegrass Union’s Joe Val festival last February, you did an impromptu “brother” set as a fill-in for a band that was delayed by weather, and it was a festival highlight. Subsequently, you announced that your next record would be a tribute to brother acts in bluegrass and country music. Was the Joe Val performance the germ of the record?

A. It wasn’t really the germ of the idea. We’d been thinking about doing a tribute to brother harmony for a while, and we’d decided at that point that the next record was going to take that direction. But if anything, the reaction to what we did [at the festival] solidified our intuition about what might be a good idea for something out of the ordinary from what people have come to expect from a Gibson Brothers record. It became clear that there’s definitely a certain part of the bluegrass population that hungers for that style of singing.

Q. Your Joe Val set was pretty heavy on Louvin Brothers material, while the record is much more diverse.

A. We’d floated the idea of the record being artist-specific before, but as the record started to take shape in our minds, it seemed more interesting for us to cover many brother-act influences. We wanted to do things from artists that were important to us, but not necessarily songs that we’d tackled before, or songs that everybody had already heard.

National Heritage Museum, Lexington 617-782-2251. http://www.bbu.org

Q. How did you choose the songs for the record?

A. We had to balance many acts, because we wanted the record to shine a light on the fact that there were tons of brother acts. So we had to choose maybe one song from each, and some of the songs represent more than one act. Our records are full of harmony, but we wanted to intensify the amount of harmony on this one, the amount of singing together throughout a song. We tried to choose as many songs that had as many opportunities for harmony throughout as we could. And we wanted to represent the call-and-response style of harmony as well, so there are some songs on the new record that represent that.

Making the record was a learning experience; if nothing else, we learned a lot about brother harmonies (laughs). We found some acts that we actually had not even listened to before, and have material on the record from them. It was really cool to hear the new stuff.

Q. What is it about brothers singing together that produces that amazing synchronicity of voices?

A. I think there are a few things in play there. The first is the genetic component, which nobody has any control of. So for Eric and I, or Charlie and Ira Louvin, that’s there already. There’s a tone that’s very similar. But — I’ve come to think about this a bit — the other part of it is learned. It’s the fact that you grow up in the same household, and you learn to talk with the same people. You pronounce things the same way, you mispronounce things the same way. That tightens things just a little bit. Eric knows how I’m going to say something, or I know how he’s going to say it, from the first time we sing it, or attempt it. With all of these acts, there’s a lot of work involved where you hone things, but there’s got to be something to those two things, where you share experiences and you learn to talk from the same source, and then have the same genetic makeup that makes your voice sound a certain way.

A lot of these brother acts, growing up in a simple rural setting where there wasn’t a lot of entertainment, had the opportunity to develop those skills. Eric and I grew up on a farm, and it wasn’t like we were the Waltons, but once we started playing instruments, a lot of our entertainment at home came from playing and figuring out songs.

Summary: The Gibson Brothers, who perform in Lexington on Saturday, are a part of musical tradition: brother harmony. In February, they’ll put out an album of songs from brother acts both famous (Everlys, Louvins, Monroes) and lesser-known (Church Brothers, Blue Sky Boys) titled, simply, “Brotherhood.”


NEW YORK — The business of bundling riskier mortgages into bonds without government backing is gearing up for a comeback. Just don’t call them subprime.

Seer Capital Management, Angel Oak Capital, and Macquarie Group are among those buying up loans to borrowers who can’t qualify for conventional mortgages because of low credit scores, foreclosures, or hard-to-document income. They plan to pool the mortgages into securities of varying risk and sell some to investors. JPMorgan Chase & Co. predicts as much as $5 billion worth of such deals this year.

Investment firms are looking to revive the market without repeating mistakes that fueled the US housing collapse and global economic crisis last decade. They’ll retain the riskiest stakes in the deals. Before the crisis, Wall Street banks shifted most of the dangers to others. Now, Seer Capital and Angel Oak use the term ‘‘nonprime’’ for lending that used to be known as subprime. While ‘‘subprime is a dirty word’’ these days, ‘‘what everyone is seeing is the credit box has shrunk so much that there’s a lot of good potential borrowers out there not being served,’’ said John Hsu, at Angel Oak.

Reopening this corner of the bond market may lower consumer costs and expand lending, aiding the housing recovery. The most dangerous slices created from the securitization of loans are also the highest-yielding, offering private-equity firms, real estate investment trusts, and others a way to increase returns while interest rates are low.

Angel Oak, for example, will buy loans with credit scores as low as 500, well below the 680 level some use as a cut-off for subprime on a scale of 300 to 850. It makes sure borrowers can afford the payments and requires at least 20 percent down payments, Hsu said. Interest rates on Angel Oak’s loans average 8 percent, versus 3.6 percent on typical mortgages.

Summary: NEW YORK — The business of bundling riskier mortgages into bonds without government backing is gearing up for a comeback. Just don’t call it subprime.


Many of us feel as if we spend our lives commuting. For Australian businessman Cillín Perera, it’s not an exaggeration. Perera, who covers hundreds of thousands of miles every year for his job, travels so much that he’s given up his apartment and is, essentially, homeless.

“I don’t really spend more than four or five days at any one time, in any one place,” said Perera, founder of Switzerland-based translation company Avilinga which provides translation, language training and testing services to companies around the world. “I live in hotels.”

To pass the time on the road, Perera photographs airports, hotel lobbies and the countryside while he is in-transit. His Instagram account, Homeless CEO, now has more than 15,700 followers.

How does Perera feel about his perpetual life on the road? Click on the arrow above to learn more. This interview with Dan Damon of BBC World Service originally appeared on the BBC World Service YouTube channel.

Summary: Whatâs it like to travel so much for work that you donât need to keep a home? Ask this executive.


FORTUNE — Judging from the sheer volume of commentary generated by Facebook’s FB $19 billion offer for WhatsApp, it seems everybody in the tech world is having a hard time swallowing the sticker price, even if most of it comes in the form of Facebook shares that may or may not be overvalued.

$19 billion puts into perspective the $12.5 billion Google GOOG spent on Motorola — until yesterday the prime example of how quickly Internet billions can be poured down a drain.

Much as I hate to admit it, I think Kara Swisher put her finger on what this is about in her Re/Code post:

“We have now established,” she wrote Wednesday, “a price floor for what it costs not to have a mobile operating system in a world in which having a mobile operating system counts for an awful lot these days. And that means, for all intents and purposes, Google’s Android operating system and Apple’s AAPL iOS…

“A mobile presence is a must-do in the current digital environment, and this massive acquisition makes it clear that Facebook has decided that its core strategy will be to create or buy up must-have apps that consumers demand to have on their mobile devices.”

Link: Facebook Price for Having No Phone OS? $19 Billion. A Must-Have Apps Play? Priceless.

Summary: Think of it, writes Kara Swisher, as the price Facebook must pay for not having a mobile OS.


AbbVie said Thursday it will shell out $21 billion to buy cancer drugmaker Pharmacyclics in the most expensive pharma deal so far this year, far surpassing Pfizer’s $17 billion bid to acquire injectable drugmaker Hospira last month.

AbbVie ABBV paid a 39% premium over Pharmacyclics PCYC Feb. 24 stock price, the day before news reports came out that a bidding war was underway for the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based biotech company.

There’s one big reason for the top-dollar price tag: a blood cancer drug called Imbruvica. Actually, it’s the only major reason to buy Pharmacyclics because it’s the only drug the company makes.

What makes Imbruvica so valuable is its future potential. In its first year, the drug brought in $492.4 million in sales, and AbbVie’s CEO Rick Gonzalez expects that amount to double — to nearly $1 billion — this year. By 2018, the expected to reach nearly $3.56 billion in sales, according to the average of analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

AbbVie was willing to pay up to get its hands on that drug and its skyrocketing sales, so much so that the deal ended up valuing Imbruvica as a whole at $42 billion. This “gamble,” as Bernstein analyst Geoffrey Porges wrote in a note following the deal, may be a sign of “desperation” on the part of the Chicago-based drugmaker.

AbbVie has been on the hunt for growth as its top-selling drug Humira, a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, faces patent expiration in 2016. Humira accounts for about 56% of AbbVie’s total $22.33 billion in sales. For comparison, its next biggest drug is Androgel, which brought in only $934 million last year.

In January, the company revised its expected 2015 adjusted earnings to the low end of analysts’ estimates as generic drug competitors continue to eat into its market share.

On top of all that, AbbVie failed in its $54 billion bid to buy U.K.-based Shire, which would have allowed it to relocate overseas lower its tax bill. The company withdrew its bid after U.S. regulators proposed changes to tax rules.

Against this backdrop, AbbVie went to the mats to challenge Johnson & Johnson JNJ and Novartis NVS it a bidding war for Pharmacyclics. J&J, which already owns 50% of Imbruvica via a manufacturing partnership with its Janssen Biotech, was edged out after it offered $250 a share, according to a Bloomberg report. AbbVie said it will pay $251.25 a share using about 58% in cash and the rest in stock.

While Imbruvica is a very valuable asset, it may not solve all of AbbVie’s ABBV woes, and investors seem to echo that sentiment by sending its stock price lower Thursday.

Summary: The pharma company is on the hunt for growth, and it's paying big to get there.


In Mo Yang is a recent New England competition winner.

According to at least one imposing authority, H.C. Robbins Landon, Haydn composed his Symphony No. 35 in 1767 for a specific festive occasion: to welcome his employer at the time, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, home from what effectively amounted to a style-scouting excursion to Versailles in Paris. The symphony once again served festive ends in a blithe, buoyant account by the Boston Classical Orchestra at Faneuil Hall on Sunday afternoon, ending a concert that marked the hardy chamber orchestra’s 35th anniversary.

As it happened, the players and their music director, Steven Lipsitt, had rather a lot of celebrating to pack into their program. The concert opened with Gluck’s Overture in D, observing the 300th anniversary of that composer’s birth in 1714. Fleeting measures of fuzzy ensemble among violins at the onset notwithstanding, the appealing starter aptly showed the orchestra’s estimable grasp of 18th-century style.

With Haydn’s Cello Concerto in D, thrice familiar and never unwelcome, came what was billed as the Boston debut of soloist Meehae Ryo, a South Korean cellist who studied in New York and Michigan, and now resides in Vienna. On the evidence of her recent Deutsche Grammophon debut album, a pairing of concertos by Saint-Saëns and Elgar, Ryo is a skillful performer with a knack for long, singing lines.

That aptitude came through in her warm tone and melting phrasing in Haydn’s Adagio and her nimble, buoyant work in the closing Allegro. But ill-tuned notes and obdurate gestures in the opening Allegro moderato imparted a sensation of tentativeness that proved tough to shake, even when Ryo asserted her authority in the cadenza.

No caveats applied to a performance of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 (K. 219, “Turkish”) that featured In Mo Yang. Also South Korean, Yang is a student of Miriam Fried at the New England Conservatory, a 2014 Concert Artists Guild competition winner, and, most recently, the winner of the Boston Classical Orchestra’s inaugural Young Artists Competition.

From his first entrance onward, Yang was an arresting performer: now sweet, now excitable, now chaste, now florid, and always, everywhere, in command. Yang provided his own artful cadenzas, each showcasing his dexterity while also adhering to Mozart’s insuperable continuity. Throughout, the orchestra brilliantly matched his style and exuberance.

An instantaneous, extended ovation retrieved Yang for a well-deserved encore: an account of the Largo from Bach’s Sonata in C (BWV 1005) as notable for its graciousness and sobriety as for its technical security.

Summary: In a concert presented on Sunday afternoon at Faneuil Hall, the Boston Classical Orchestra marked its 35th anniversary and a composer’s 300th birthday, and hosted two notable debuts.


There’s a new book coming out this month about Tesla TSLA and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

Anyone who follows the business world knows that Musk is more than a bit of a character. He has divorced the same woman twice, and he genuinely believes that the day when machines rebel against humans will be here sooner than we think.

So it’s no surprise that Ashlee Vance, author of the book — called “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future” — was able to gather some great quotes. So great, in fact, that the Washington Post put together a list of the best. Here are a few we really loved:

Ex-wife Justine Musk: “I do think of him as the Terminator. He locks his gaze on to something and says, ‘It shall be mine.’ Bit by bit, he won me over.”

Google CEO Larry Page: “He’s kind of homeless, which I think is sort of funny. He’ll e-mail and say, ‘I don’t know where to stay tonight. Can I come over?’ I haven’t given him a key or anything yet.”

Musk himself: “My mentality is that of a samurai. I would rather commit seppuku than fail.”

Christie Nicholson, daughter of an advisor: “One night he told me, ‘If there was a way that I could not eat, so I could work more, I would not eat. I wish there was a way to get nutrients without sitting down for a meal.’”

There’s also a story in the book where an anonymous Tesla employee quotes an e-mail from Musk chastising him for missing a company meeting for the birth of his child.

Read more of the insanity at the Washington Post’s website.

Summary: some great stories about the Tesla CEO.


WASHINGTON, Dec. 2— One day after Richard V. Allen was cleared of wrongdoing for taking $1,000 from a Japanese magazine, he was embroiled today in a dispute with White House lawyers.

The issue was the instructions he received about listing sources of income on his financial disclosure form. Some aspects of Mr. Allen's disclosure documents are still under investigation by the Justice Department.

Mr. Allen maintains that the White House counsel's office told him he did not have to list the clients who paid more than $5,000 annually to his consulting concern, which he sold early this year.

Fred Fielding, the White House counsel, initially supported Mr. Allen's contention, saying he believed that H. Lawrence Garrett 3d, another White House lawyer, was the source of that advice. But Mr. Garrett, who has since left the White House, said he had not given the advice to Mr. Allen, and Mr. Fielding, a friend of Mr. Allen who owns property with him, withdrew his statement.

This was among the confusing developments on the day after the Justice Department's announcement that no special prosecutor would be appointed to investigate the giving of $1,000 to Mr. Allen by three representatives of a Japanese magazine. Mr. Allen had helped them get an interview with Nancy Reagan.

The Justice Department said it would continue to investigate the circumstances under which Mr. Allen wrote the wrong date on the financial disclosure form reporting the sale of his consulting concern, the Potomac International Corporation. Peter D. Hannaford, a former Reagan aide with strong ties to the White House, bought the concern. Sharp Change in Role

Mr. Allen has taken leave of absence from his job as President Reagan's national security adviser while the investigation continues. The developments today centered on Mr. Allen's business dealings, and on the reluctance of Mr. Reagan to embrace Mr. Allen on the basis of Tuesday's announcement about the $1,000 payment. These developments also included a sharp change in Mr. Fielding's role in the Allen inquiry.

The White House deputy press secretary, Larry Speakes, announced today that the counsel's office would review the Justice Department findings on Mr. Allen to determine if he violated regulations on ethical conduct for Government employees. Such violations would fall below the level of criminal offenses that would require appointment of a special prosecutor. Mr. Fielding said he had removed himself from that review process because of his relationship with Mr. Allen.

Mr. Fielding said that in removing himself he was following a policy on Mr. Allen that he adopted in January when they both joined the White House staff. However, Mr. Fielding asserted last week that he would continue to advise Mr. Reagan on Mr. Allen's fitness to serve in the White House.

At that time, Mr. Fielding said there was no need for him to step aside because his relationship with Mr. Allen was neither so strong nor so confidential as to constitute a conflict of interests.

Today, Mr. Fielding said that a deputy White House counsel, Richard A. Hauser, would be handling the Allen matter from now on. Speaking in general terms, however, Mr. Fielding said Mr. Allen was legally correct not to disclose the names of the clients who did more than $5,000 business with Potomac International while Mr. Allen was its sole owner. Question Is Referred

Later, when the law was read to him, Mr. Fielding seemed uncertain and referred the question to J. Jackson Walter, director of the Office of Government Ethics.

Saying he could not comment specifically on the Allen case, ''because I don't know the facts,'' Mr. Walter noted that, as a legal principle, the corporate shield of anonymity did not cover a consultant who was ''directly involved in the provision of the services.''

''A consultant who is doing business in a corporate form who personally renders services should disclose those clients for whom he personally provides services and is paid more than $5,000 in compensation annually,'' Mr. Walter said.

The identity of Mr. Allen's clients is an issue because Mr. Reagan's top aides last week ordered him to review his office records and tell them about his contacts with Japanese businessmen while he worked in the White House.

Mr. Allen has acknowledged having contacts with representatives of the Nissan Motor Corporation U.S.A., which markets Datsun vehicles and which formerly paid Mr. Allen's firm $50,000 a year. Mr. Allen said yesterday he also discussed the automobile business in a White House meeting in March with a high official of Toyota Motor Sales, another Japanese car maker. Last Spring Is Focus

White House officials, in ordering the review of Mr. Allen's appointments, said they were interested in his contacts with Japanese businessmen last spring, at a time when the White House was considering import quotas on Japanese cars. Mr. Allen said he removed himself from those deliberations because Potomac represented Nissan and other companies involved in the automobile business.

''My recollection is I was told that I did not have to list my clients,'' Mr. Allen said today of his disclosure form. As to the identity of the lawyer who told him so, ''I don't recall, but it was definitely somebody in the White House counsel's office.''

''I had several clients who paid over $5,000,'' Mr. Allen said today. Among them were Aisin Seiki, an automobile parts manufacturer, and the Industrial Research Institute, an organization underwritten by utilities. A third company, Technova Inc., was a Potomac client in 1978 under Mr. Allen and has returned since Mr. Hannaford bought the concern.

Both Technova and the Industrial Research Institute have close ties to Tomatsu Takase, whose wife was one of the three women involved in the $1,000 payment to Mr. Allen.

This web of business and personal relationships is further complicated by Mr. Hannaford's having played a role in setting up the interview with Mrs. Reagan. Mr. Hannaford is the former business partner of Michael K. Deaver, the deputy White House chief of staff and Mr. Reagan's closest personal aide. Gifts Are Under Inquiry

The Justice Department inquiry found nothing improper about the receipt of the $1,000. It will continue to investigate the misdating of the disclosure form and the gift to Mr. Allen of two wrist watches from the Japanese women.

Interviews with Mr. Allen and Mr. Hannaford show that the Potomac firm has continued to represent some of the same clients since Mr. Hannaford bought it on Jan. 19, 1981. Mr. Allen reported initially that this transaction took place in 1978 and it is this disparity that is under inquiry. Mr. Allen amended his reporting form last month to show that the sale took place in January.

Mr. Allen said he sold the concern for $85,000. He said he received monthly payments until last Saturday, when Mr. Hannaford paid the balance, $50,000. Mr. Allen suggested that the balance was paid to ward off charges that receiving outside income posed a conflict of interest.

The White House review that is to follow the Justice Department investigation will deal with Mr. Allen's conduct under Executive Order 11222, which relates to such matters as conflicts of interests and the use of one's office for personal gain.


Mayor Koch got 81 of the 251 measures for New York City he sought from the Legislature this year, according to an analysis by the Mayor's legislative office.

Numerically, it was the Koch administration's best performance in Albany to date. Nevertheless, absent from the Mayor's list of successes were several key measures, including a state takeover of local Medicaid costs, a reorganization of the city's Board of Education, an extension of rent and eviction protections for loft tenants and metering of water use in the city.

Among the measures approved for the city were the creation of a fourth platoon of transit police, which Mr. Koch had been seeking for years, and a bond issue that, if endorsed by voters this fall, would provide $50 million to improve the city's jails.

Also approved were a 15 percent increase in welfare benefits paid entirely by the state - as the city wanted; major changes in the city's pension system and a refinancing of the Fire Department Pension System, and the closing of a loophole that had allowed real estate sales made through stock transactions to escape the city's real property transfer tax. Approval of Aid to M.T.A. Cited

The Mayor also cited as one of his victories the passage of a $5.85 billion improvement plan for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority system and a $793 million operating assistance plan for the authority. But that, said David Langdon, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Stanley Fink, ''is revisionist history.''

The legislative leaders and Governor Carey asserted that although the Mayor had helped provide the last votes needed to enact the operating aid package, his hard-line positions and demands - such as his longstanding requirement that the 60-cent fare be protected through at least the end of the year - were also the greatest obstructions to agreement on a plan.

Why the city succeeds or fails in getting various pieces of legislation approved is often unclear. On the plus side, city and state officials cited the effectiveness of Mr. Koch's lobbying office, and in particular of his chief lobbyist, Margaret L. Boepple.

They also cited his friendly relationship with Mr. Fink, Democrat of Brooklyn, and his unusually warm relationship with the majority leader of the Senate, Warren M. Anderson, Republican of Binghamton. His ties with Mr. Anderson were strengthened last year when he endorsed two key Republicans in New York City races. Attacks on Legislature Recalled

On the minus side, officials cited the traditional reluctance of upstate legislators to vote for disproportionate amounts of aid to the city - votes that are invariably attacked in their home communities.

Officials also cited the Mayor's unwillingness to moderate his positions, and his occasional public attacks on the Legislature. Mrs. Boepple and her staff spend a good deal of time smoothing legislative feathers that are ruffled by the Mayor's remarks.

''Some of the members resent it,'' Richard J. Roth, a spokesman for Senator Anderson, said of the Mayor's style. But he pointed out that the Mayor had become less vocal in his assaults on the Legislature.

''Early in the session, there was the big fight over Medicaid,'' Mr. Roth said, ''and he put that all on Andy. Yet he was very careful to say that in the past, he had done this and had done that for the city.''

Mr. Langdon agreed that the Mayor had little to do with the loss on the takeover of Medicaid. Other legislative losses were directed at the Mayor, his aides conceded. On the Board of Education reorganization, which would have given the Mayor effective control over the board, the Mayor struck a deal with the United Federation of Teachers to get it to drop its opposition to the plan. Nevertheless, the plan failed, largely because of a coalition of black and Puerto Rican legislators who do not have particularly warm feelings toward Mayor Koch.

''It was a case where people could vent their anger at the Mayor without crippling the city,'' Mrs. Boepple said, ''and they did.''


The opening scene for ''All in the Family,'' a street of tidy, if tediously uniform, row houses, was filmed in Glendale, Queens, many residents contend. Although the producers of the television program decline to confirm or deny that, the residents continue to believe it.

''There is this joke that this is Archie Bunker territory,'' said Terence G. McArdle, managing editor of a local weekly, The Glendale Register, who, like many others in Glendale and its sister community next door, Ridgewood, has lived in the area all his life.

But now the area, particularly the Ridgewood section, is trying to shed its reputation as a closed community and has succeeded in luring young professional people who want to buy homes and can afford them here. Ridgewood is the bigger lure to young people because of its accessibility to subways.

Ridgewood consists mainly of two-family, three-family and sixfamily houses that were erected shortly after the turn of the century to accommodate the wave of German immigrants who were attracted by jobs in the community's knitting mills and breweries. The overflow spilled into Glendale in the 1930's.

Somewhat isolated by a ring of cemeteries, the blocks of one-family and two-family brick and frame row houses in Glendale look much as they did when they were built 50 years ago.

''A friend of mine says we are lost in a time warp out here, still in the 1930's,'' Jim Grayshaw, a lawyer who recently bought a house in Ridgewood, said.

In Ridgewood-Glendale, as the area is generally known, houses have usually stayed in the family, more than 50 percent are owner-occupied, and there is a saying that ''you find your house through the church, not the realtors.''

The mostly lower-middle-class population of about 38,000 in Ridgewood has grown older - the median age is close to 38, according to the 1980 Census. The older residents who have finally paid off the mortgages on their homes fear the community is vulnerable to the encroachment of Bushwick, a miniature South Bronx of burned-out buildings, on its western border.

By bringing in prospering, younger families into previously abandoned buildings, the community leaders hope to prevent Bushwick from getting any closer.

To attract young couples, a nonprofit group of businessmen and residents recently started turning into cooperatives six-family houses in Ridgewood that have been abandoned or burned. The group, the Greater Ridgewood Restoration Corporation, is also leading a major promotional campaign.

It has sent out brochures that sing the praises of its housing stock to realtors all over the city, it is directing an arsonprevention program and it has applied for a Federal landmark designation for the community's early 20th century homes and thus qualify for tax breaks.

A group of merchants will soon begin a $3 million revitalization program for Myrtle Avenue, the main commercial strip that runs through the area.

The program, financed through Federal block grants for community development and co-sponsored by New York City's Office of Economic Development, will include the renovation of the mile of storefronts, the building of two pedestrian plazas, the development of off-thestreet parking spaces and the planting of trees.

The plan to turn small apartment buildings into cooperatives is a twist in the cooperative trend: Developers have traditionally preferred to work with large apartment complexes for greater profit.

''People think of co-ops as 100-family high rises,'' said Dorothy Tymon, a former executive director of the Greater Ridgewood Restoration Corporation who heads her own real estate firm in the area.

But Miss Tymon, who is also involved in cooperative conversions, said that, by doing a lot of the paperwork herself and hiring a local architect whose fees are lower, she will be able to put cooperatives on the market for between $17,000 and $30,000.

The building that introduced cooperatives to the area was a deserted six-family house at 1714 Palmetto Street, right under the old elevated tracks and only a few blocks from Bushwick.

''One day the owner just walked out, and we had our first abandoned multifamily dwelling,'' Paul Kerzner, the president of the restoration corporation, recalled.

Interpreting the deserted building as the first sign of what is known in the area as ''the Bushwick syndrome,'' businessmen quickly formed the corporation. They talked the city into taking title of the building temporarily and to help the corporation to rehabilitate it with low-interest loans.

Four years and $150,000 later, the building is completely renovated, and the corporation is waiting final approval of sales from the State Attorney General's office. The expected price for a two-bedroom unit is about $25,000,which is considerably lower than most cooperatives in the city.

Despite Ridgewood's low profile in the real estate market, the cooperative units on Palmetto Street were filled immediately with tenants not only from Ridgewood, but also from Manhattan and , Astoria. After placing one ad in two city newspapers, ''we tenanted the building in one weekend,'' Joanne Reimann, who handled the sales for the corporation, said.

Ridgewood-Glendale's crime rate is one of the lowest in Queens, and the security-conscious community has set up a large civilian security patrol.