Has it really been five years since Sideways? Its 2004 success gave director and Oscar-winning co-writer Alexander Payne immense momentum. He squandered that advantage by failing to follow up with a major project.
Well, not exactly. He wrote and directed a short, 14e Arrondissement, for the 2006 omnibus film, Paris, Je T’aime (Paris, I Love You). He and writing partner Jim Taylor took passes at the scripts for I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and Baby Mama. In 2007 they worked arduously on a script, Downsizing, which Payne hopes to direct next year.
As Congress prepares to debate America’s first major climate change bill, Omaha Public Power District officials are warning consumers that efforts to cool the earth’s atmosphere will mean burning holes in their pocketbooks.
Not surprising since the state’s second largest utility district — Nebraska Public Power District covers more geographic territory — just doubled its carbon output, and its two main coal plants rank in the top 15 percent nationally for carbon emissions. OPPD’s two closest neighbors operate plants that rank in the top 5 percent.
The 932-page bill from Sens. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) features a cap and trade program, whereby carbon emissions credits are bought and sold by polluters (such as OPPD) or investors. Credits are gradually taken out of the market, making pollution more expensive while reducing carbon emissions.
Sometimes the story behind art is what makes it remarkable. The “who, what, where, when and why” emerge, enlivening the art itself. That’s the case with River of Gold: Pre-Columbian Treasures from Sitio Conte, the Joslyn Art Museum’s latest big show.
The galleries on the second level are packed with a stunning amount of gold. There are loads of glittering bullion, including thousands of tiny gold beads, heaps of intricately carved gold discs and finely rendered, heavily detailed animal effigy pendants. The star of the show is a huge, emerald-laden animal effigy that’s recognized as the most famous piece from this era and culture.
“People are attracted to gold the world over,” said Pamela Jardine, curator of the show and an American Section research associate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Museum. “I think that brings people to this show. And I also think the story is pretty interesting.”
Omaha’s Great Eight: The CWS kicks off at Rosenblatt
by Adam Froemming
Like half-blitzed boaters on the Missouri River, the College World Series is a rite of summer in Omaha.
Part tailgate, part spectacle, it’s become our version of Mardi Gras on 13th Street. Has the CWS become more about beer gardens and social events than baseball? Probably. But for one article, let’s forget the parties and back slapping, take a peek at the eight teams headed our way and a gander at who will be left standing in 10 days.
Summer seems limitless in early June. So many things to see, do and be before the rise of the Harvest Moon come fall. Break out your flip-flops and shades, check out our guide of 99-plus events and activities this summer and prepare to gorge your day-planner on all this hot fun in the summertime. — SW
How two cities are paying millions to defend ordinances
by Bryan Cohen
Kris Kobach might be the hardest working attorney in the legal battle to empower cities and states to enact legislation targeting illegal immigrants.
He is the go-to expert for locals nationwide looking to purge undocumented workers and their families. The Kansas City lawyer represents three Fremonters in their effort to force a special election on a proposed ordinance to ban the hiring, harboring or renting of housing to illegal immigrants. The case to decide if Fremont can hold the election will likely be heard at summer’s end by the State Court of Appeals. Officials on both sides say the state Supreme Court could instead pull the case immediately onto its docket.
Kobach’s resume appears to make him a perfect candidate to argue the case. He graduated Harvard University in 1988. In 1992 he received his doctorate in Political Science from Oxford University. His thesis compared the initiative process in the United States to other countries, making Fremont’s mix of referendum rights and immigration law right up his alley. In 1995 his received his J.D. From Yale Law.
On Sept. 1st, 2001 Kobach began a fellowship with U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. Eight days later he was thrust into the Bush administration’s post 9/11 scramble to lock down land borders, air and sea ports.
Kobach said he’d been working on the details of a plan that would eventually be known as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System. It required foreign nationals (non-immigrants) from Muslim countries to register with the federal government so their movements could be tracked.
The terms “fearless” and “morning radio personality” don’t always jive, but they do in the case of Clear Channel KGOR 99.9-FM wake-up man Dave Wingert. Far from the madding crowd of shock-jocks, the veteran broadcaster and stage actor is brave enough to simply be himself on air. Enervating, effusive, empathetic, effeminate.
He’s gallant enough to have accepted the fact his biological father no sooner saw him as a newborn infant than he went home and killed himself. His mother laid that heritage on him when he was a teenager.
“What do you do with that?” Wingert asked rhetorically in an interview.
What he did was learn all he could about his father, a man who was the love of his mother’s life but also manic-depressive. The revelation of how he died came as Wingert began pursuing radio and theater at Ohio University. That’s when he discovered his father had worked in the same fields in New York.
Church is a tie that binds and a salve that heals. Its significance in the black community is especially profound with African Americans’ historical disenfranchisement and attachment to community churches.
“Faith has always been the element that motivated us and allowed us to continue forward in perilous times,” said Salem Baptist Church Pastor Selwyn Bachus. “When we didn’t have anything else, the one thing we did have was faith and the one institution we had and still have is the African American church. Every major movement in the history of African Americans has been founded on faith and out of the church. It’s the primary thing and everything else kind of grows out of that.”
“You can use the visual of a bicycle wheel,” he said. “Faith is that hub, and the other efforts are really spokes out of that hub, which is the thing that holds it together.” He said church remains central but its “interaction with congregants is not as intense as it once was.”
As blacks’ living patterns have diversified, many no longer live in the immediate area of their church. Bachus said Salem members come from all over. He said, however, Omaha remains segregated, with blacks living predominantly on the north side.
Mayoral candidates Hal Daub and Jim Suttle prepare for the final face off.
by Bryan Cohen
When the polls close May 12, Omaha should have its 50th mayor in the books. Democrat Jim Suttle and Republican Hal Daub have gone head-to-head in several debates since March, pitting Suttle’s vague, “room-for-you” rhetoric against Daub’s detailed, at times overbearing, policy proposals. The two were true to style during their most recent joint-appearance at the Slowdown’s May 3 town hall meeting. Suttle told the youngsters city government needs to “treat people like people” as Daub whizzed through numbers on recycling targets, regional landfills and exporting Omaha’s compost.
Among time-honored local issues (cops and budgets), debate over downtown development has revealed what city elections do at their best: make politicians envision more creative uses for public space. Both candidates are keen on “in-fill” development before Lincomaha becomes a reality. Suttle has pushed the hardest for development on the north side with a proposal to extend a 16th St. bridge into Council Bluffs, and bring more jobs closer to the neighborhood that’s suffering from some of the highest unemployment in the country. Daub has proposed building new business parks in four quadrants of the city.
Suttle has said Omaha needs to start with a “blank piece of paper” on the transportation system; but the longtime HDR transportation engineer hasn’t said how big that piece of paper should be, or what’s on it. Daub has criticized the bus system, but focused his transportation talk on building a downtown light rail system.
The financial world looks to Omaha and annual Berkshire event
by Jeremy Schnitker
Robert P. Miles and Janet Tavakoli have both have authored books about Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. While they certainly are not alone in their positions on the renowned Oracle of Omaha, their views are better informed than most. Each has concluded that if every American company abided by his business principles, the current economic crisis would not have occurred. That is one reason, Tavakoli says, the financial world will look to Omaha this weekend.
Long before the economic calamity began, the authors agree, Buffett warned against many of the things that contributed mightily to the crisis: unbounded greed, over-leveraging and the unregulated derivatives mark.
They note Berkshire typically invests in companies with sold ethics and tangible value. Those were not the dominant standards of AIG, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. And Buffett, who draws a comparatively meager $100,000-a-year salary, cannot be compared to the self-important execs drawing millions in bonuses as their companies are bailed out with taxpayer dollars.
Omaha native discusses artificial intelligence and his Stephen King adaptation
by Leo Adam Biga
It’s been awhile since Omaha writer Rick Dooling, author of the novels White Man’s Grave and Brainstorm, enjoyed this kind of traction. Fall 2008 saw publication of his cautionary riff Rapture for the Geeks: When AI Outsmarts IQ (Harmony Books). His screen adaptation of Stephen King’s short story, Dolan’s Cadillac, will soon be released as an indie feature. Dooling collaborated with King on the television series “Kingdom Hospital,” and the master of horror asked him to tackle Dolan, a classic revenge story with supernatural undertones.
Dooling’s novel Critical Care became a Sidney Lumet film. He was preparing a script for Alan J. Pakula when the director died in an accident. Then came the King partnership. Writing books is his stock-in-trade, and although Dolan could change that, Rapture comes to mind in any appreciation of Dooling.
Rapture is smart, funny, disturbing and centered on a modern conflict. Dooling fixes on the interface between the parameters of computer technology’s increasing sophistication and meta-presence in our lives, versus existential notions of what it means to be human.
How Omaha’s community gardens are reshaping neighborhoods
by Lainey Seyler
Stephanie Ahlschwede, executive director at United Methodist Ministries, likes to tell this story she calls the Tale of the Apocryphal Tomato.
One day in the heat of summer, a gardener at a community garden supported by United Methodist Ministries and its Big Garden project picked a ripe, juicy tomato. Showing her prize tomato to the master gardener, the two of them admired the fruit. The master gardener asked what she would do with the tomato. She declared that she would put it in a sandwich, but said, “How do I get it in there?”
Ahlschwede says of the story, “It’s funny and sad. It speaks to the tragic disconnect between people and their food.”
Food literacy is one of many elements the Big Garden and other community gardens in Omaha battle in a fight for a better community, including issues of nutrition, racism, poverty, aesthetics and sustainability.
UNO faculty member treks to the arctic for research and adventure
by Warren Francke
Where to begin when describing the adventures of Harmon and Alvar in the Arctic? Scooting across the ice in winter or working past midnight in the lingering sun of summer?
There are the “Aha!” moments, the geo-gasms when rocks they study reveal new secrets, and the “Oh no!” encounters with polar bears and frigid water. Dr. Harmon Maher Jr., the geology professor from Omaha, has gone rock hunting with Norwegian Alvar Braathes some two dozen times or more.
He recently joined Braathes for the first time in winter and rejoiced at two fantastic scooter rides.
“You can get to a place in one hour that requires a day of walking in the summer,” thanks to Braathes’ high-powered snowmobile, he said.
But the mission was the same: researching the 300-kilometer West Spitzbergen Fold and Thrust Belt on the islands of the Svalbard Archipelago, 3,800 miles from Omaha but less than 800 from the North Pole.
Nebraska still windier than Iowa, still fewer turbines
by Bryan Cohen
In Nebraska, you don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows … you need highly trained engineers, investors willing to negotiate the state’s unique public power landscape, enterprising land owners backed by specially trained lawyers and at least a few billion dollars.
By some measures, Nebraska’s wind development over the past two years has gone from dead air to a slight breeze: the legislature passed a key wind energy bill, wind power has doubled since 2007 and the state’s largest power generators have announced renewable energy goals with wind as a top priority. But Nebraska, the sixth windiest state, is still ranked 24th in wind energy production with only 160-megawatts of wind power online.
By comparison, Iowa ranks second in wind production with 2790 MW online while ranking only 10th in capacity. Colorado ranks sixth in production and eleventh in capacity.
With a lack of will at home, it might take federal action for Nebraska to start reaching its potential. Here’s a look at Nebraska’s biggest wind blockers.
On the eve of this week’s G20 meeting being held in London and hosted by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to discuss the global economic crisis, French president Nicolas Sarkozy and German chancellor Angela Merkel threatened to boycott the summit early today after seeing fish and chips on the menu. Quoting Voltaire’s famous pronouncement that “England has forty-two religions and only two sauces,” Sarkozy said that he and his entourage would not be ingesting Yorkshire pudding, chutney, or scones either.
Global stock exchanges reeled in the wake of the culinary kerfuffle. After fluctuating wildly on world exchanges, the Euro stabilized by mid-afternoon when Omaha investor Warren Buffett purchased Germany and then France, along with some other smaller countries, Belgium, maybe? “Not only does this give us more control over the Euro,” said Buffett, “but many of these people also shave and eat chocolates.”
Austin Live: The Reader Messes with Texas - 25 Mar 2009
After several days in the welcome Texas heat, dragging myself up and down 6th St., and in and out of clubs on an hourly basis, seeing great bands, great spectacles and knocking back many, many Lone Stars, my nutshell rating of Austin’s SXSW is that it is brilliantly outrageous and absolutely incredible (see my bullet points in Backbeat on page 33). Kudos Austin, you have certainly succeeded in keeping the fest, now in its 23rd year, weird — and wonderful. Below, two of our senior music writers dish out as many details as we could cram into these pages and Jeremiah McIntyre of Omaha’s Box Elders contributes a tour diary of the band’s SXSW voyage. Giddyup! — Sarah Wengert
Monday, March 16 — We pack and head to Denton, TX. Folks there have organized “House by House Fest.” Two house shows a night during their Spring Break, getting all the bands they want to see on their way to SXSW. We’ve never played Denton but have heard nothing but great things from other bands. About 50 or so pretty wild kids arrive and the show is a blast. Everyone we meet is great and we sell a few records. We’ll be back to Denton.
Not many people show up to the foreclosure auction of their own home. But Michelle Floyd went through too much to just watch her house slip away. Flanked by her real estate agent, Mary Packett, the two anxiously waited for their first foreclosure auction, held in the hallway of the Omaha City-County Building.
An attorney from the St. Louis law firm Kozeny & McCubbin arrived with a stack of tightly bound papers. Floyd’s bank, Wells Fargo, had contracted with the firm to handle the legal process of foreclosing the home, a common practice. The firm listed 22 foreclosure sales in Douglas County and 10 in Sarpy County between March 10-24.
Floyd was only slightly relieved when the attorney told her the bank was postponing the foreclosure auction.
“I’m worn out and tired. I don’t have any fight left in me,” she said.
Excerpted with Permission. To hear the full story go to netnebraska.org/radio.
North Omaha is a neighborhood that many white Omahans don’t visit often, if ever.
Many white people don’t get to see this part of the city because very few of them live here. Parts of North Omaha are 90 to 95 percent black, while the greater city has only an 11-13 percent black population. Jill Fenner, Director of the Fair Housing Center, said when former Sen. Ernie Chambers’ proposed dividing the Omaha school district along existing attendance lines, his plan was decried as creating segregated schools. “But all he did was draw circles around geographic areas. The segregation existed, it just wasn’t visible to a lot of people.”
#1 Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by U.S. Occupation Over one million Iraqis have met violent deaths as a result of the 2003 invasion, according to a study conducted by the prestigious British polling group, Opinion Research Business (ORB). These numbers suggest that the invasion and occupation of Iraq rivals the mass killings of the last century — the human toll exceeds the 800,000 to 900,000 believed killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and is approaching the number (1.7 million) who died in Cambodia’s infamous “Killing Fields” during the Khmer Rouge era of the 1970s.
ORB’s research covered 15 of Iraq’s 18 provinces. Those not covered include two of Iraq’s more volatile regions — Kerbala and Anbar — and the northern province of Arbil, where local authorities refused them a permit to work. In face-to-face interviews with 2,414 adults, the poll found that more than one in five respondents had had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, as opposed to natural cause.
