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Inland Empire (film)

Inland Empire is a 2006 experimental psychological thriller film written, directed and co-produced by David Lynch. As of 2024, it is the last feature film Lynch has directed, marking his longest hiatus between film projects. The film's cinematography, editing, score and sound design were also by Lynch, with pieces by a variety of other musicians also featured. Lynch's longtime collaborator and then-wife Mary Sweeney co-produced the film. The cast includes such Lynch regulars as Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton, and Grace Zabriskie, as well as Jeremy Irons, Karolina Gruszka, Peter J. Lucas, Krzysztof Majchrzak, and Julia Ormond. There are also brief appearances by a host of additional actors, including Nastassja Kinski, Laura Harring, Terry Crews, Mary Steenburgen, and William H. Macy. The voices of Harring, Naomi Watts, and Scott Coffey are included in excerpts from Lynch's 2002 Rabbits online project. The title borrows its name from a metropolitan area in Southern California.

Released with the tagline "A Woman in Trouble", the film follows the fragmented and nightmarish events surrounding a Hollywood actress (Laura Dern) who begins to take on the personality of a character she plays in a supposedly cursed film production. An international co-production between the United States, France, and Poland, the film was completed over a three-year period and shot primarily in Los Angeles and Poland. The process marked several firsts for Lynch: the film was shot without a finished screenplay, instead being largely developed on a scene-by-scene basis; and it was shot entirely in low-resolution digital video by Lynch himself using a handheld Sony camcorder rather than traditional film stock.

Inland Empire premiered in Italy at the Venice Film Festival on 6 September 2006. It received generally positive but polarized reviews from critics, with attention centering on its challenging and surrealist elements. It was named the second-best film of 2007 (tied with two others) by Cahiers du cinéma, and listed among Sight & Sounds "thirty best films of the 2000s", as well as The Guardians "10 most underrated movies of the decade".

The film was remastered by Lynch and Janus Films in 2022.

Plot
In a hotel room, the Lost Girl—a young prostitute—cries following an unpleasant encounter with a client while watching a television show about a family of surrealistic anthropomorphic rabbits who speak in cryptic statements and questions.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, actress Nikki Grace auditions for the lead role in the film On High in Blue Tomorrows. In her mansion, she is visited by a neighbor who asks about the film and then tells "an old tale": a boy passed through the doorway into the world, causing a reflection that gave birth to an evil that followed him. Then she tells a variation: a girl was lost in the marketplace - "as if half-born" - while the alley behind the marketplace was the way to the palace. The woman is certain that Nikki will get the role, and insists that despite Nikki's claims to the contrary, the plot involves murder. The next day, Nikki celebrates having won the role as her Polish husband Piotrek watches on.

During the first rehearsal involving Nikki and the film's lead actor Devon, the actors are interrupted by a disturbance on the set. Devon investigates, but finds nothing. Shaken by the event, director Kingsley Stewart confesses that they are shooting a remake of a German film entitled 47, based on a Polish folk-tale. Production was abandoned after both leads were murdered, creating rumors of the film being cursed.

After filming the first few romantic scenes between their respective characters Sue and Billy, Nikki and Devon begin an affair, despite earlier protestations that their relationship would be strictly professional and despite Piotrek warning Devon of "dark consequences" for "wrong actions". Nikki starts to have difficulties distinguishing between real life and scenes from the film. Entering a door marked "Axxon N." in an alley, she finds herself walking onto the set and causing the disturbance during the first rehearsal weeks earlier. Nikki runs away and enters a prop, which turns into an actual house. Inside the house, Nikki sees her husband going to bed. She hides from him in a closet, where she encounters a troupe of prostitutes.

At this point, various plotlines and scenes begin to entwine and complement each other, with the chronological order and the distinction between characters unclear. Some scenes show her joining the (modern-day) prostitutes, while other scenes depict prostitutes and pimps in a wintery Łódź in the 1930s. She is also shown to live a troubled marriage with her poor husband "Smithy". In another set of scenes, Nikki/Sue is talking to a policeman in a room above a nightclub. She tells him how she was sexually abused in her childhood and how her husband joined a traveling circus from Poland as a gamekeeper. She also speaks of the Phantom, a hypnotist who worked at the circus and then disappeared.

In one scene, Sue confronts Billy in front of his family, professing her love. She is sent away and slapped by Billy's wife Doris. It is now revealed that Doris was the woman who earlier told a policeman that she had been hypnotized to kill someone and found a screwdriver sticking in her own stomach. Doris remembers that the Phantom hypnotized her to kill Sue.

Feeling stalked by the Phantom, Nikki/Sue arms herself with a screwdriver. Walking down Hollywood Boulevard she notices her doppelgänger and Doris, and meets with the policeman above the nightclub. Outside, she is eventually stabbed by Doris with her own screwdriver. Nikki/Sue collapses at a bus stop next to two homeless women. One of the homeless women tells all kinds of strange stories about her friend Niko, while the other holds a lighter in front of Sue's face until she dies. Kingsley yells "Cut!" and the camera pans back to show this has merely been a film scene.

Kingsley informs Nikki that her scenes for the film are complete. In a daze, Nikki wanders off set and into a nearby cinema, where she sees not only On High in Blue Tomorrows but events that are occurring in real-time. She follows a man upstairs and enters an apartment marked "Axxon N". Confronted by the Phantom, Nikki shoots him. The Phantom transforms into a grotesque figure before dying. Nikki flees into Room 47, which houses the rabbits on television - though she fails to see them - and then meets the Lost Girl. The Lost Girl escapes from the hotel and into Smithy's house, where she happily embraces her husband and son. Nikki is back at her mansion.

The film ends with a celebration involving the troupe of prostitutes, a one-legged woman mentioned earlier, Niko and her pet monkey, and others. The women dance to Nina Simone's "Sinner Man", while a lumberjack saws a log.

Themes and analysis
When asked about Inland Empire, Lynch refrained from explaining the film, responding that it is "about a woman in trouble, and it's a mystery, and that's all I want to say about it." When presenting screenings of the digital work, Lynch sometimes opened with a quotation from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad:

"We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe."

New York Film Festival official Richard Peña summarized the film as "a plotless collection of snippets that explore themes Lynch has been working on for years", including "a Hollywood story about a young actress who gets a part in a film that might be cursed; a story about the smuggling of women from Eastern Europe; and an abstract story about a family of people with rabbit heads sitting around in a living room." The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw called the film "a meditation on the unacknowledged and unnoticed strangeness of Hollywood and movie-making in general", adding that Lynch "establishes a bizarre series of worm-holes between the worlds of myth, movies and reality." Critic Mark Fisher wrote that the film "often seems like a series of dream sequences floating free of any grounding reality, a dream without a dreamer [in which] no frame is secure", but argued that "it is the film that is mad, not the characters in it ... it is Hollywood itself that is dreaming". He also commented that "to see Lynch's worlds captured on digital video makes for a bizarre short-circuiting: as if we are witnessing a direct feed from the unconscious".

Dennis Lim of Slate described the film as "a three-hour waking nightmare that derives both its form and its content from the splintering psyche of a troubled Hollywood actress", and commented on Lynch's use of digital video, describing it as "the medium of home movies, viral video, and pornography—the everyday media detritus we associate more with ... intimate or private viewing experiences than communal ones", adding that the film "progresses with the darting, associative logic of hyperlinks". Scholar Anne Jerslev has argued that the film "constitutes multiple and fractured modes of perception in a world of digital screens". Jerslev further contends that the film features "formal similarities with a website's hyperlinked layering of screens/windows, constantly disclosing new worlds from new points of view", but according to theorist Steven Shaviro "it also builds on cinematic codes, even as it deconstructs them".

Background
Inland Empire is the first Lynch feature to be completely shot in digital video; it was shot in standard definition with a hand-held Sony DSR-PD150 by Lynch himself. Lynch has stated that he will no longer use film to make motion pictures. He explained his preference, stating that the medium gives one "more room to dream", and more options in post-production. Much of the project was shot in Łódź, Poland, with local actors, such as Karolina Gruszka, Krzysztof Majchrzak, Leon Niemczyk, Piotr Andrzejewski and artists of the local circus Cyrk Zalewski. Some videography was also done in Los Angeles, and in 2006 Lynch returned from Poland to complete filming. Lynch then edited the final results in Final Cut Pro in his home office over six months. He did not work with frequent collaborator and editor Mary Sweeney because "there wasn't a real organized script to go by and no one knew what was going on except him."

Lynch shot the film without a complete screenplay. Instead, he handed each actor several pages of freshly written dialogue each day. In a 2005 interview, he described his feelings about the shooting process: "I've never worked on a project in this way before. I don't know exactly how this thing will finally unfold ... This film is very different because I don't have a script. I write the thing scene by scene and much of it is shot and I don't have much of a clue where it will end. It's a risk, but I have this feeling that because all things are unified, this idea over here in that room will somehow relate to that idea over there in the pink room."

Interviewed at the Venice Film Festival, Laura Dern admitted that she did not know what Inland Empire was about or the role she was playing, but hoped that seeing the film's premiere at the festival would help her "learn more". Justin Theroux has also stated that he "couldn't possibly tell you what the film's about, and at this point I don't know that David Lynch could. It's become sort of a pastime—Laura [Dern] and I sit around on set trying to figure out what's going on." In an NPR interview, Dern recounted a conversation she had with one of the movie's new producers, Jeremy Alter. He asked if Lynch was joking when he requested a one-legged woman, a monkey and a lumberjack by 3:15. "Yeah, you're on a David Lynch movie, dude," Dern replied. "Sit back and enjoy the ride." Dern reported that by 4 p.m. they were shooting with the requested individuals.

Financing and distribution
Lynch financed much of the production from his own resources, with longtime artistic collaborator and ex-wife Mary Sweeney producing. The film was also partially financed by the French production company StudioCanal, which had provided funding for three previous Lynch films. StudioCanal wanted to enter the film in the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Instead, it premiered at Italy's Venice Film Festival on 6 September 2006, where David Lynch also received the Golden Lion lifetime achievement award for his "contributions to the art of cinema". The film premiered in the United States on 8 October 2006 at the New York Film Festival. The film received a limited release in the US beginning on 15 December 2006; distribution was handled by the specialist company 518 Media.

Lynch hoped to distribute the film independently, saying that with the entire industry changing, he thought he would attempt a new form of distribution as well. He acquired the rights to the DVD and worked out a deal with StudioCanal in an arrangement that allowed him to distribute the film himself, through both digital and traditional means. A North American DVD release occurred on 14 August 2007. Among other special features, the DVD included a 75-minute featurette, "More Things That Happened", which compiled footage elaborating on Sue's marriage to Smithy, her unpleasant life story, the Phantom's influence on women, and the lives of the prostitutes on Hollywood Boulevard. 15 years after the North American DVD release, The Criterion Collection announced a two-disc Blu-ray that was scheduled to release on 21 March 2023.

Soundtrack
Lynch contributed a number of his own compositions to the film's soundtrack, marking a departure from his frequent collaborations with composer Angelo Badalamenti. His pieces range from minimalist ambient music to more pop-oriented tracks such as "Ghost of Love". Polish composer Marek Zebrowski wrote music for the film, and acted as music consultant. The soundtrack includes the following musical pieces:

 * 1) David Lynch – "Ghost of Love" (5:30)
 * 2) David Lynch – "Rabbits Theme" (0:59)
 * 3) Mantovani – "Colors of My Life" (3:50)
 * 4) David Lynch – "Woods Variation" (12:19)
 * 5) Dave Brubeck – "Three to Get Ready" (5:22)
 * 6) Boguslaw Schaeffer – "Klavier Konzert" (5:26)
 * 7) Kroke – "The Secrets of the Life Tree" (3:27)
 * 8) Little Eva – "The Locomotion" (2:24)
 * 9) Etta James – "At Last" (3:00)
 * 10) David Lynch – "Call from the Past" (2:58)
 * 11) Krzysztof Penderecki – "Als Jakob erwachte" (7:27)
 * 12) Witold Lutoslawski – "Novelette Conclusion" (excerpt) / Joey Altruda – "Lisa" (edit) (3:42)
 * 13) Beck – "Black Tambourine" (film version) (2:47)
 * 14) David Lynch – "Mansion Theme" (2:18)
 * 15) David Lynch – "Walkin' on the Sky" (4:04)
 * 16) David Lynch / Marek Zebrowski – "Polish Night Music No. 1" (4:18)
 * 17) David Lynch / Chrysta Bell – "Polish Poem" (5:55)
 * 18) Nina Simone – "Sinnerman" (edit) (6:40)

Distribution and box office
The film was screened at several film festivals around the world, most notably the Venice Film Festival in Italy, New York Film Festival in New York, United States, the Thessaloniki Film Festival in Greece, Camerimage Film Festival in Poland, Fajr International Film Festival in Iran, San Francisco Independent Film Festival in San Francisco, United States, International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Netherlands and the Festival Internacional de Cine Contemporáneo de la Ciudad de México in México City, Mexico.

In October 2006, Lynch bought U.S. distribution rights to the film from StudioCanal, which he will retain in any later deals made. The following month, he announced his intent to self-distribute the film theatrically via his company Absurda and 518 Media, stating, "A conventional distributor is a heartache, and I’m finished with that. With self-distribution I’m able to shape the outcome of the film so much more." Lynch would also embark on a 10-city promotional tour in January 2007 with a cow, "I ate a lot of cheese during the film, and it made me happy. I’m looking forward to meeting theater owners and getting out among the people with the cow." Lynch signed a service deal with Rhino Entertainment, which distributed the film on home video with Ryko Distribution on 14 August 2007.

518 Media released Inland Empire to two theaters in the United States on 6 December 2006, grossing a total of $27,508 over its opening weekend. It later expanded to its widest release of fifteen nationwide theaters, ultimately grossing $861,355 at the American box office. In other countries outside the United States, Inland Empire grossed $3,176,222, bringing the film's worldwide total gross to $4,037,577. It was released on 20 August 2007 in the United Kingdom, by Optimum Releasing, 4 October 2007 in the Benelux, by A-Film, and 6 August 2008 in Australia, by Madman Entertainment.

Critical reception
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 72% based on 113 reviews, with an average score of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Typical David Lynch fare: fans of the director will find Inland Empire seductive and deep. All others will consider the heady surrealism impenetrable and pointless." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Manohla Dargis of The New York Times classified Inland Empire as "fitfully brilliant" after the New York Film Festival screening. Peter Travers, the film critic for Rolling Stone magazine wrote, "My advice, in the face of such hallucinatory brilliance, is that you hang on." The New Yorker was one of the few publications to offer any negative points about the film, calling it a "trenchant, nuanced film" that "quickly devolves into self-parody". Jonathan Ross, presenter of the BBC programme Film 2007, described it as "a work of genius ... I think". Damon Wise of Empire magazine gave it five stars, calling it "A dazzling and exquisitely original riddle as told by an enigma" and Jim Emerson (editor of RogerEbert.com) gave it 4 stars out of 4: "When people say Inland Empire is Lynch's Sunset Boulevard, Lynch's Persona or Lynch's 8½, they're quite right, but it also explicitly invokes connections to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le Fou, Buñuel and Dalí's Un Chien Andalou, Maya Deren's LA-experimental Meshes of the Afternoon (a Lynch favorite) and others". However, Carina Chocano of the Los Angeles Times wrote that "the film, which begins promisingly, disappears down so many rabbit holes (one of them involving actual rabbits) that eventually it just disappears for good".

Dern received near universal acclaim for her performance, with many reviews describing it as her finest to date. Lynch attempted to promote Dern's chances of an Academy Award for Best Actress nomination at the 2007 Academy Awards by campaigning with a live cow, though she was ultimately not nominated for the award.

Restoration by Janus Films
Inland Empire was restored and remastered by Janus Films in 2022, and was screened throughout the year beginning on April 8. The restoration of the film and soundtrack was overseen by David Lynch. For the restoration the original upscaled HD footage from the editing process was first downscaled back to standard definition to discard "false detail", then converted to 4K using an AI upscaling algorithm.

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Category:Causality

Articles relating to causality, an influence by which one event, process, state, or object (a cause) contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an effect) where the cause is partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is partly dependent on the cause.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Category:Causality


text: Category:Bridges in Greece

title: Category:Bridges in Greece


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Jon Wood

Jonathan Wood (born October 25, 1981) is an American motorsport executive who serves as president of Wood Brothers Racing, the NASCAR Cup Series' longest continuously active team founded by a group of brothers that included his grandfather Glen Wood.

Early career

Wood was given his first go kart as a child by Dale Jarrett, the Wood Brothers' driver at the time. After racing go-karts, he moved up to stock cars, racing in the USAR Hooters Pro Cup Series and the NASCAR Winston West Series. Wood made his NASCAR debut in the 2001 Craftsman Truck Series at Martinsville Speedway, driving the #15 Ford F-150 for Billy Ballew Motorsports. He started and finished 31st after suffering rear end failures. The release of Chuck Hossfeld allowed Wood to drive Roush Racing's #50 Eldon Ford for the rest of the year. He claimed a pair of top five finishes (Kansas and Fontana) in his limited appearances. In 2002, Jon ran the entire schedule, earning ten top-10s with sponsorship from the United States Navy. That year, he made his Busch Series debut at IRP, subbing for Jeff Burton in the #9 Gain Ford Taurus. He started and finished 6th that day.

In 2003, Wood notched two poles, 10 top fives and 20 top ten finishes, including two wins on his way to a fifth-place standing in the Craftsman Truck Series points. He ran most of the season with sponsored by Bob Graham. He ran his second Busch race that season at the Ford 300 in the #15 for ppc Racing. He finished 22nd. Unfortunately, the 2004 Craftsman Truck Series season was a struggle for Wood, who was forced to run unsponsored for virtually the entire season.

2005–2008
Wood moved to NASCAR's Busch Series full-time in 2005, driving for ST Motorsports (which later merged with the Wood Brothers to form Wood Brothers/JTG in 2006.) Wood had two top-fives and finished fifteenth in points, finishing fourth in the Rookie of the Year standings. In August 2005, Wood was released from his development contract with Roush Racing and became a member of the Wood Brothers driver development program. Wood had one top-five finish in 2006 and moved up one spot in the standings.

Originally, plans called for Wood to move up to Nextel Cup full-time in 2007; however, because of sponsor issues and the need for more experience, Wood ran only a partial schedule during the 2007 Nextel Cup season. Wood was to continue to drive full-time in the #47 Clorox-sponsored Ford Fusion in the Busch Series but was pulled from the ride following medical issues. He spent the rest of the season back in the Truck Series in the #21 Ford and had six top-tens in eleven starts as well as a pole position. He shared the #21 truck in 2008 with his cousin Keven but only had two top-ten finishes. He also made three Sprint Cup starts that season but failed to finish higher than 33rd. At the end of the season, the truck team for which Woods was running closed down and he has not raced since late 2010.

After retiring from driving, Wood now serves as the President and Co-owner (formerly the Senior Vice President and the Director of Business Development) for Wood Brothers Racing. He actively participates in the day-to-day operations of the company's merchandising and business development.

NASCAR
(key) ( Bold – Pole position awarded by qualifying time. Italics – Pole position earned by points standings or practice time. * – Most laps led. )

title: Jon Wood


text: Category:Bridges in Connecticut

title: Category:Bridges in Connecticut


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Chi-Chi's

Chi-Chi's can either refer to a defunct Mexican food restaurant chain founded in the United States in 1976, which continued in Europe only as a single restaurant after the North American owner declared bankruptcy and folded in 2004, or to its namesake brand of Mexican food grocery products produced and marketed when the original North American restaurant chain owner sold the rights to use its name on said products in 1987.

Restaurant chain
Chi-Chi's is a single Mexican restaurant currently operating in Vienna, Austria, that is the only remnant left of a much larger chain. The company was briefly owned by Tumbleweed, Inc. The chain also once operated in the United States and Canada but exited those countries in 2004, and closed their Germany and Belgium locations in 2022.

Founding
Chi-Chi's was founded by restaurateur Marno McDermott (his wife's nickname was "Chi Chi" ) and former Green Bay Packers player Max McGee. The first restaurant opened at 7717 Nicollet Avenue South, in Richfield, Minnesota (a suburb of Minneapolis) in early August, 1976. McDermott had previously founded the Zapata fast-food Mexican chain, which later became Zantigo. From 1977 to 1986, the chain was run by former KFC executive Shelly Frank. When Frank took leadership, the chain moved its headquarters to his hometown of Louisville. By March 1995, the chain had grown to 210 locations.

Management and marketing
In 2001, Chi-Chi's applied for a trademark on the word "salsafication" but was denied by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. The company's slogans were "A celebration of food" and, later, "Life always needs a little salsa."

Bankruptcy, hepatitis A, and closure in United States and Canada
Chi-Chi's last owner while the company was still in business in the United States and Canada was Prandium Inc., which had filed for bankruptcy several times, including in 1993 as Restaurant Enterprises Group Inc. and again in 2002 as Prandium. On October 8, 2003, Chi-Chi's and Koo Koo Roo, another Prandium subsidiary, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy themselves. The flagship Chi-Chi's restaurant in Richfield, Minnesota was put up for sale in October 2003.

In November 2003, a month after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Chi-Chi's was hit with the largest hepatitis A outbreak in American history, with at least four deaths and 660 other victims of illness in the Pittsburgh area, including high school students who caught the disease from the original victims. The hepatitis was traced back to green onions at the Chi-Chi's at Beaver Valley Mall near Monaca, Pennsylvania, about 30 mi northwest of Pittsburgh. Chi-Chi's settled the hepatitis A lawsuits by July 2004. At the time the suits were settled, Chi-Chi's had only 65 restaurants, fewer than half of the number of four years prior.

In August 2004, Outback Steakhouse bid $42.5 million for the rights to buy its choice of Chi-Chi's 76 properties, but did not purchase the Chi-Chi's name, operations, or recipes. On the weekend of September 18, 2004, Chi-Chi's closed all 65 of its remaining restaurants. Outback had hoped to convert many of the properties to its own restaurants, but instead eventually sold the majority of the properties to Kimco Realty Corporation, a real estate investment trust company in New Hyde Park, New York.

Europe

In 2002, Francis Leroy of Belgium purchased the master franchise for Belgium, and later the master franchises for Europe in 2008, North Africa in 2011, and China in 2012.

The European-based company tried to expand into Denmark in 2011 but no reliable citation can be found when the Danish restaurants were closed.

In the first half of 2015, the chain in Belgium had to close five under-performing restaurants.

Chi-Chi's expanded into Austria by opening their first restaurant in Vienna in 2018.

The last snapshot of the European chain's official website in January 2022 showed that the company had three locations left, two in Liege and one in Brugge, all in Belgium. There is no evidence that the website was active much beyond May 2022. The Brugge location announced on Facebook that it was closing in October 2022.

Grocery brand
In 1987, Hormel Foods acquired the rights to produce and market Chi-Chi's branded salsa and related products in the United States. By 1996, Hormel was making $60-million annually from this product line. In 2009, Hormel formed a 50%-50% joint venture with Mexico-based food manufacturer Herdez Del Fuerte called MegaMex Foods, LLC, to manufacture and distribute Mexican food products in the United States. The Chi-Chi's brand was placed in this new company along with other related food brands such as Herdez, La Victoria and Búfalo brands. Besides salsas, the Chi-Chi's brand also include dips, tortillas, tortilla chips and taco seasoning mixes. Chi-Chi's branded food products are usually found in major supermarkets and discount stores.

In April 2021, MegaMex hired a TikTok personality to be their Chi-Chi's brand ambassador for that year's Cinco de Mayo advertising period.

title: Chi-Chi's


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List of lieutenant governors of Colorado

The lieutenant governor of Colorado is the second-highest-ranking member of the executive department of the Government of Colorado, United States, below the governor of Colorado. The lieutenant governor of Colorado, who acts as governor of Colorado in the absence of the officeholder and succeeds to the governorship in case of vacancy, is elected on a partisan ticket.

After the 1966 general election, the Constitution of Colorado was amended to require the joint election of governor and lieutenant governor — candidates running as a ticket. Prior to this amendment, the lieutenant governor candidate was elected separately from the governor during the same election—sometimes resulting in a governor and a lieutenant governor from different political parties.

The current lieutenant governor is Dianne Primavera, a Democrat, who took office 8 January 2019.


text: Category:Bridges in Norway

title: Category:Bridges in Norway


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Diamond Lake, Minneapolis

The Diamond Lake neighborhood is in the Nokomis community in Minneapolis. It is bounded by Diamond Lake Road and 55th Street on the north, Cedar Avenue on the east, 62nd Street on the south, and Interstate 35W on the west. It is a part of Ward 11, currently represented by city council member Emily Koski.

The Diamond Lake neighborhood, together with Hale and Page, is represented by the Hale Page Diamond Lake Community Association (HDPL). It has approximately 2233 households within its boundaries.

Lake
Diamond Lake is named for the lake of the same name. The origin of the name is unknown, but it likely comes from the shape of the lake. The lake is home to a 73-acre park in MPRB district 5, established in the late 1920s. Unlike the members of the nearby Chain of Lakes, Diamond Lake is preserved as a natural wetland, featuring only an unpaved path and a canoe launch/fishing dock.

title: Diamond Lake, Minneapolis


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User:K. Eng

K. Eng is a ThinkPad enthusaist and moderator at http://forum.thinkpads.com.

title: User:K. Eng


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User talk:Shoegirl91

The Story of French River's cross Island

French River, this nice historic area, was discovered by great explorer Samuel des Champlains and his Men for the reason to find fur. But thru all those years, what are all the historical facts that happen? Here is the story of Cross Island.

The name Cross Island is known for the 3 crosses on the island that represent's the death of the priest's that were camping for the night.

After a long day on a canoe, on there way to discover southern ontario, a couple of priest's were staying on an Island overnight. AS they were telling stories around the fire, eating indian bread, savages kidnaped them and killed them.

All we know is that there are three crosses on that island, but we don't know how much were killed. Also many campers who camped on that island reported that they heared many strange noises. If you ever come to The French River area, and see that island...you will know it is full of historic events

title: User talk:Shoegirl91


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Chris Samuels

Chris Samuels (born July 28, 1977) is an American former professional football player who was an offensive tackle for 10 seasons in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Alabama Crimson Tide, and was recognized as a unanimous All-American. Selected third overall in the 2000 NFL draft, Samuels played his entire pro career for the NFL's Washington Redskins (now Washington Commanders) and was a six-time Pro Bowl selection.

Early life
Samuels was born in Mobile, Alabama. He attended John Shaw High School in Mobile, where he played both offense and defense for the John Shaw high school football team, and helped Shaw to an 8–3 record and a spot in the AHSAA playoffs.

College career
While attending the University of Alabama, Samuels played for the Alabama Crimson Tide football team from 1996 to 1999. As senior in 1999, he was named to the All-Southeastern Conference (SEC) first team by the conference's coaches, the Associated Press, the Birmingham News and the Mobile Press Register, and was recognized as a unanimous All-American. He also won the Outland Trophy as the nation's best college interior lineman, and was a semifinalist for the Lombardi Award.

Samuels won the Jacobs Blocking Trophy as the SEC's most outstanding blocker. He started 42 straight games, from early in his 1996 freshman season until his last regular-season game as a senior, without yielding a sack. Samuels did not allow a quarterback pressure in 1999, had 91 knockdown blocks and played nearly every offensive snap during the regular season, and opening holes for Crimson Tide running back Shaun Alexander, who gained 1,383 yards rushing.

Professional career
Samuels was considered the premier offensive tackle prospect in the 2000 NFL draft. He did not work out at the NFL Combine after sustaining an injury to his right knee. He was drafted third overall by the Washington Redskins, who had given up two first-round picks (12th and 24th) plus a fourth and fifth-round choice to move up to third in the first round. Samuels was the only offensive tackle drafted in the top 19 of the draft, and the first Alabama offensive lineman selected in the first round of an NFL Draft since Bob Cryder in 1978.

Washington Redskins

Samuels immediately became the starting left tackle for the Redskins and was then selected to six Pro Bowls. In 2000, Samuels was one of only four players on offense to start every game, joining Jon Jansen, Mark Fischer and Stephen Alexander. Samuels won co-Offensive Rookie of the Month for October with Dolphins tackle Todd Wade. He missed the last three quarters in the season finale vs. Arizona with a neck injury. In 2001, Samuels started all 16 regular-season games at left tackle and was voted to the Pro Bowl, he earned game balls, along with the rest of the offensive line, for two games: vs. Seattle and at New Orleans. Samuels was featured on the cover of the December 3, 2001 issue of Sports Illustrated along with running back Stephen Davis after becoming the first team in NFL history to lose its first five games, then go on to win its next five games.

In 2002, Samuels started 15 regular-season games at left tackle and earned his second consecutive trip to the Pro Bowl. He was also voted as the Redskins 2002 Ed Block Courage Award winner. In 2003, he started 13 regular-season games at left tackle and missed games vs. New Orleans, at New York Giants and vs. Dallas because of a knee injury.

In 2004, he started all 16 regular-season games at left tackle and helped running back Clinton Portis rush for 1,315 yards, becoming only the fourth Redskin in history to do so in a single season.

Samuels was regarded as the leader of Washington's offensive line. During the 2005 off-season, the Redskins signed him to a 7-year contract worth about $47 million and a signing bonus of about $16 million. In 2005, he started all 16 regular-season games and two postseason contests at left tackle. He was named to the Pro Bowl after helped open up running lanes for Clinton Portis to rush for a franchise-record 1,516 yards. In 2006, he started all 16 regular-season games at left tackle. He helped Ladell Betts rush for a career-best 1,154 rushing yards and four touchdowns. Samuels was named to the Pro Bowl for the second consecutive season.

In 2007, Samuels was named to the Pro Bowl for the third consecutive season and started all 16 regular-season games and one postseason contest at left tackle. He paved the way for the Redskins to post their third highest all-time rushing total in a single game ( 296 yards on 48 carries) at New York Jets on November 4. Samuels was fined $12,500 for delivering an illegal chop block that injured Antonio Garay of the Chicago Bears during a game in 2007. He later apologized to Garay, who spent the remainder of the season on Injured Reserve, as well as to Bears head coach Lovie Smith. In 2008, New York Giants defensive end Mathias Kiwanuka accused Samuels of "dirty play," after he made a low tackle on Kiwanuka during the final minutes of the 2008 NFL season opener. Samuels denied allegations that he intentionally attempted to injure Kiwanuka, stating "On that particular play I was just trying to protect my quarterback... It was never my intention to go out there and injure another player."

In 2008, Samuels was named a Team Captain played and started in 12 regular season games and was inactive in one contest with knee cartilage irritation at Detroit on October 26, seeing his consecutive starting streak snapped at 73 games. He was placed on Injured Reserve by a triceps tear on December 9, 2008, and missed the last three games. Samuels was named to the 2008 Pro Bowl but did not play because of the triceps injury. He paved the way for Clinton Portis to rank fourth in the NFL in rushing yards (1,487) and total yards from scrimmage (1,705). Portis tied for the NFL lead in total first downs (82) with Chicago Bears RB Matt Forte and Atlanta Falcons RB Michael Turner. Samuels helped Portis to have the second-most rushing yards (1,487) in a single-season in club history and opened up running lanes for Portis to post more than 120 yards rushing in five consecutive contests (121 rushing yards, at Dallas; 145 at Philadelphia; 129 vs. St. Louis; 175 vs. Cleveland, and 126 at Detroit). Samuels led the way for Portis to tie a club record for most consecutive 100-yard rushing games (5 straight contests in 2008), a record shared by Rob Goode (1951), Portis (2005) and Ladell Betts (2006).

Samuels suffered through temporary upper-body paralysis based on compression of his neck during a helmet to helmet hit while in pass protection on a play against the Carolina Panthers on October 11, 2009. The injury was determined to be related to spinal stenosis, a condition that he was diagnosed with as a child. Due to the risk of incurring a long-term, severe injury related to his condition by continuing his career, he retired from the NFL on March 4, 2010, based on advice from his doctors.

Coaching career
Samuels indicated during his retirement press conference with the Washington Redskins that he intended to continue his career in football and become a coach. In 2010, he participated in the NFL's Minority Coaching Fellowship as an assistant to the Redskins' offensive line coach Chris Foerster. In February 2011, Samuels volunteered as the offensive coordinator at Mattie T. Blount High School in Prichard, Alabama. At Blount, he helped lead the Leopards to an overall record of 10–2 and an appearance in the Alabama High School Athletic Association playoffs. After only one season at Blount, in January 2012 Samuels returned to the University of Alabama to serve as a student assistant coach for Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban. There he was an assistant offensive line coach while working to complete his degree in physical education. In 2015, he left Alabama to become a high school coach at Osbourn High School in Manassas, Virginia. In November 2016, Samuels stepped down from the Osbourn football coach job. In 2017, Samuels was hired as the offensive coordinator at Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland. After stepping down at Winston Churchill in 2019, Samuels was hired as offensive coordinator at Northwest High School in Germantown, Maryland.

Honors
Samuels was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame as part of the 2016 class. He was inducted into the Redskins Ring of Fame on October 20, 2019 at halftime against the San Francisco 49ers.

Personal life
Samuels is the younger brother of Arena Football League player and coach Lawrence Samuels. He married longtime girlfriend Monique Cox in March 2012. They have three children, Chris Jr., Milani, and Chase. Monique appeared as a cast member on The Real Housewives of Potomac for four seasons. On June 15, 2023, Monique filed for divorce after 11 years of marriage, with the divorce being finalized on September 25, 2023.

title: Chris Samuels


text:
Latinism

Latin alphabet world distribution.svg.{{legend|#008000|Latin script is the sole official (or de facto official) national script.}}{{legend|#00fc00|Latin script is a co-official script at the national level.}}{{legend|#dae0da|Latin script is not officially used.}}

]] A Latinism (from ) is a word, idiom, or structure in a language other than Latin that is derived from, or suggestive of, the Latin language. The Term Latinism refers to those loan words that are borrowed into another language directly from Latin (especially frequent among inkhorn terms); English has many of these, as well. There are many Latinisms in English, and other (especially European) languages.

Lexical Latinism
On the basic level of particular words and lexemes, creation and adoption of Latinisms has a long history, dating back to the ancient times. Early lexical Latinisms are attested in various languages that came into contact with Latin language during the expansion of ancient Roman culture. The same process continued during the Middle Ages, and acquired new forms in modern times under the influence of scientific terminology, largely based on the Scientific Latin. As a particular subgroup of lexical Latinisms, various onomastic Latinisms are formed through Latinisation of proper names, including personal names and toponyms.

Syntactical Latinism
Renewed interest in Classical Latin literature during the Renaissance period resulted in the emergence of various forms of syntactical Latinisms, manifested by a tendency of renaissance and later authors to shape the syntax of their sentences according to rhetorical style used by Classical Latin authors, like Cicero and Caesar.

Idiomatic Latinism
Idiomatic Latinisms are phrases or idioms that are adopted from Latin language, or modeled according to Latin phraseology.

title: Latinism


text:
Doug Liman

Douglas Eric Liman (born July 24, 1965) is an American film director and producer. He is known for directing the films Swingers (1996), Go (1999), The Bourne Identity (2002), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Jumper (2008), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), American Made (2017) and Road House (2024).

Most of his career has been associated with the production company Hypnotic. He is co-owner with Dave Bartis, whom he met as an undergraduate at Brown University where they co-founded Brown Television (BTV) and the National Association of College Broadcasters (NACB).

Liman is on the advisory board of the Legal Action Center and the Arthur Liman Public Interest Program at Yale Law School.

Early life
Liman, who is Jewish, was born in New York City, the son of Ellen (née Fogelson), a painter and writer, and Arthur L. Liman, a lawyer.

Liman began making short films while still in junior high school and studied at International Center of Photography in New York City. While attending Brown University, he helped to co-found the student-run cable television station BTV and served as its first station manager. He also co-founded the NACB, the first trade association geared to student-staffed radio and television stations, in 1988.

Liman attended the graduate program at University of Southern California, where he was tapped to helm his first project in 1993, the comedy film Getting In.

Career
Liman's first major success was Swingers, released in 1996. The film, written by Jon Favreau and based on Favreau's life, is a comedy about struggling actors amid the L.A. club milieu. Liman raised the funding and the film was made on the cheap, starring Favreau and his friends (Vince Vaughn, Ron Livingston, and Patrick Van Horn), ultimately cost $250,000. The film was a critical success, and jump-started the careers of Liman and the featured actors. Liman sold the film to Miramax for $5.5 million.

Liman next directed Go (1999), which tracks the events of a drug deal gone wrong through three different points of view as plot lines diverge and reconverge; Liman was also the film's cinematographer. The film was a modest success, grossing $28.4 million worldwide against a $20 million budget, and garnered positive reviews from critics.

In 1999, Liman shot a commercial for Nike featuring Tiger Woods.

Liman next directed the 2002 action thriller The Bourne Identity starring Matt Damon, an adaptation of the 1980 Robert Ludlum novel. The film was a box office success, earning over $200 million, and began a Bourne film franchise that has since included four additional films. Liman directed only the first Bourne film, after a notoriously "chaotic" shoot disrupted his relationship with the studio. As he had personally acquired the rights to the franchise from Ludlum, he served as an executive producer for three of the four sequels (2004's The Bourne Supremacy, 2007's The Bourne Ultimatum and 2016's Jason Bourne).

Liman executive-produced and directed the first two episodes ("Premiere" and "The Model Home") of the successful Fox prime time drama The O.C. (2003–2007). Liman produced and directed a series of comedy shorts for the Chrysler Film Project and Cannes Film Festival entitled Indie Is Great.

Liman also directed Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), a comedic thriller about an increasingly distant married couple, both secretly assassins, who are hired to kill each other. The film was Liman's most commercially successful to date, and is well known for the off-screen romance that developed between stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie after making the film.

In 2005, Liman signed on to direct the pilot episode of NBC's television series Heist, which is about a season-long attempt to rob three jewelry stores on Beverly Hills' swanky Rodeo Drive. Also that same year, the production company Hypnotic has struck a deal with NBC Universal Television Studio. Shortly afterwards, he renamed the production company from Hypnotic to Dutch Oven.

His film adaptation of Steven Gould's science fiction novel Jumper was released in 2008.

In 2009, he co-founded the website 30ninjas.com which is geared towards fans of action movies and television, gaming, extreme sports and viral videos. He also maintains a blog on the site.

Liman directed 2010's Fair Game, about the Plame affair, which competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.

In 2011, Liman directed and produced I Just Want My Pants Back, a television series that aired on MTV. He produced Covert Affairs and Suits, two original series on the USA Network. He directed the film adaptation of the Hiroshi Sakurazaka novel, All You Need is Kill, released as Edge of Tomorrow (2014), starring Tom Cruise. In 2017, he directed Aaron Taylor-Johnson and John Cena in the military thriller The Wall, and directed Cruise again, in the crime-action film American Made, a biopic of pilot Barry Seal.

In August 2016, Liman signed on to direct Dark Universe, a film set within the DC Extended Universe and based on superhero team Justice League Dark after leaving the adaptation of Gambit. However, Liman has departed from the project due to schedule conflicts with the film Chaos Walking (2021), that Liman was working on that time.

In January 2020, Liman announced that the Edge of Tomorrow sequel, Live Die Repeat and Repeat, was currently in its early planning stages.

In May 2020, it was reported that Liman would be directing, writing, and producing a fictional movie shot in outer space. Tom Cruise was set to star and produce. According to reports, they would fly to space and to the International Space Station as part of the SpaceX Axiom Space-2 mission. As of 2022, no script had been finished and the film was described as "aspirational."

In November 2021, it was reported that Liman was in talks to direct a remake of the 1989 film Road House, with Jake Gyllenhaal starring. The film was officially greenlit on August 2, 2022, by Amazon Studios, with Liman and Gyllenhaal's involvement confirmed, with production beginning later that month in the Dominican Republic. He later condemned Amazon's decision to release the film straight to streaming instead of a theatrical release and would boycott its SXSW premiere as a result.

In December 2022, it was announced Liman would direct heist film The Instigators, starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, for Apple Studios, marking Liman's first film with Damon since The Bourne Identity.

In January 2023, the 2023 Sundance Film Festival premiered Liman's documentary Justice, about sexual misconduct charges against 2018 Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. In November 2023, it was announced that Liman would direct a reboot of The Saint for Paramount Pictures, with Regé-Jean Page starring.

Film
Director

Producer
 * Mail Order Wife (2004)

Executive producer
 * The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
 * The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
 * The Killing Floor (2007)
 * Jason Bourne (2016)
 * The Phantom (2021)

Documentary film

 * Reckoning with Torture (2016)
 * Justice (2023) (Also executive producer)

Television
TV movies

title: Doug Liman


text: Category:Bridges in North Korea

title: Category:Bridges in North Korea


text:
H-E-B

H-E-B Grocery Company, LP, is an American privately held supermarket chain based in San Antonio, Texas, with more than 380 stores throughout the U.S. state of Texas and the country of Mexico. The company also operates Central Market, an upscale organic and fine foods retailer. As of 2022, the company had a total revenue of US$38.9 billion. H-E-B ranked number 6 on Forbes' 2022 list of "America's Largest Private Companies". The company also ranked number 3 on Forbes' 2024 list of "Customer Experience All-Stars." H-E-B was named Retailer of the Year in 2010 by Progressive Grocer. Supermarket News ranks H-E-B 13th on the list of "Top 75 North American Food Retailers" by sales. Based on 2019 revenues, H-E-B is the 19th-largest retailer in the United States. It donates 5% of pretax profits to charity. The official mascot of H-E-B is named H-E-Buddy, an anthropomorphic brown grocery bag, with multiple grocery items emerging from the top.

History
The company was founded on November 26, 1905, when Florence Butt opened the C.C. Butt Grocery Store on the ground floor of her family home in Kerrville, Texas. In 1919, Howard Edward Butt, Florence's youngest son, took over the store upon his return from World War I. Shortly after becoming owner of his mother's small store, Howard tried four expansions into Central Texas, including one in Junction, all of which failed. Finally, in 1927, Howard launched a successful second store in Del Rio, Texas, followed by the purchase of three grocery stores in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. The initials of Howard E. Butt became the name of the store.

Charles, the younger son of Howard E. Butt, became president of H-E-B in 1971. As of 2019, Charles Butt is chairman and CEO of H-E-B, having grown the business from annual sales of $250 million in 1971 to $13 billion in 2006. In 2010, Craig Boyan was named H-E-B's president and COO. By 2018, Martin Otto, the former CFO and chief merchant, had become the COO. In 2011, the company was #12 on Forbes’s list of “America’s Largest Private Companies”. H-E-B is the largest privately held company and largest private employer in Texas.

H-E-B acquired Favor Delivery as a wholly owned subsidiary in February 2018. The details of the merger were not disclosed.

In 2019, H-E-B invested millions of dollars to replace cashier stations with self-checkout kiosks or smartphone apps at the same time that many other supermarkets (such as Walmart and Target) were shifting toward more self-checkout lanes and app usage.

Operations
Headquartered in downtown San Antonio, H-E-B operates more than 300 stores in over 150 communities across Texas. As of late 2010, its operations serve approximately "55-plus" percent of the Texas market, with primary Texas markets including the Corpus Christi, San Antonio, Austin, Laredo and Houston metro areas. The company does business in five different retail formats: general H-E-B stores, Central Market, H-E-B Plus, Mi Tienda, and Joe V's Smart Shop. In 2010, the company announced plans to build 19 new stores in Texas. H-E-B opened its first store outside of Texas in 1996, a 24000 sqft H-E-B Pantry store in Lake Charles, Louisiana, though the expansion was short-lived and ultimately failed. The H-E-B Pantry store format was discontinued in 2000, and the company closed its sole Louisiana store in 2003. In 2010, H-E-B offered consumers the opportunity to vote on possible designs for new stores as they expanded into new communities.

The company operates several manufacturing facilities in Texas, including one of the largest milk- and bread-processing plants in the Southwest. H-E-B produces many of their own-brand products, including milk, ice cream, bread, snacks, and ready-cooked meats and meals. These and other private-label products are sold under various brands, including "Central Market Naturals", "Central Market Organics", "H-E-B", "H-E-Buddy", "Hill Country Fare", "H-E-B Creamy Creations" ice cream, "H-E-B Mootopia" milk, and "H-E-B Fully Cooked".

Several stores include multiple-tenant operations through third-party lease arrangements. Many stores include a bank operation, cellular kiosk, and multiple nationally recognized tenants.

The Austin Business Journal rated H-E-B as the largest private-sector employer in the region in 2017.

In 2019, the company announced plans to build a technology center at its headquarters complex.

Central Market
In 1994, H-E-B introduced its Central Market concept in Austin. Based in San Antonio, Central Market offers an organic and international food selection, including a European-style bakery and extensive wine and beer selections. The chain is now composed of 10 stores – three in Dallas, two in Austin, and one each in Fort Worth, Houston, Plano, San Antonio, and Southlake. H-E-B operates four different formats of stores that introduce general merchandise and elements of the "market" concept, though they are unrelated to Central Market's mainline stores: The Woodlands Market in The Woodlands in Montgomery County, Kingwood Market in the Kingwood section of Houston, and the Austin-Escarpment store in South Austin. H-E-B's Alon Market opened on October 17, 2008, in San Antonio.

In July 2015, the Market concept was expanded as a new Spring Creek Market was opened in southern Montgomery County in Spring, Texas, on Rayford Road.

H-E-B Plus!
In 2004, the company launched three (in Austin, Corpus Christi, and Waco) H-E-B Plus! stores with an expanded focus on nonfood categories, such as entertainment and other general merchandise. The company added three additional locations in 2005 (Corpus Christi, Round Rock, and San Antonio). The stores offered several new departments, including Do-It-Yourself and Texas Backyard, and greatly expanded product categories in baby, card and party, cosmetics, entertainment, housewares, and toys.

Several other locations were later added, including stores in Flour Bluff, Corpus Christi, Brownsville, Burleson, Bastrop, Beaumont, Belton, Boerne, Katy, Killeen, Victoria, Waxahachie, New Braunfels, Kyle, Laredo, Leander, Mission, Rio Grande City, San Juan, San Antonio, Pearland,  Copperas Cove and Hutto.

Mi Tienda
In 2006, H-E-B opened Mi Tienda in South Houston (adjacent to Pasadena) in greater Houston – a 63000 sqft Latino-themed store. Another Mi Tienda opened in north Houston in 2011; it is twice the size of the original location, and has 97000 sqft of space. This second location is off of Little York and Interstate 69/U.S. Route 59. Mi Tienda, which means "my store" in Spanish, sells Mexican baked goods: a tortilleria, where employees make tortillas; and a carniceria providing marinated cuts of chicken, beef and pork. In addition, Mi Tienda also houses the Cocina restaurant, which serves Mexican food and drinks.

Joe V's Smart Shop
In 2010, H-E-B opened Joe V's Smart Shop, a brand featuring discount items modeled after discount grocer Aldi. The first location opened was a 54690 sqft store located in northwest unincorporated Harris County, Texas, near northwest Houston. The store format is smaller compared with a full-service H-E-B store but double the size of an H-E-B Pantry store. A larger, second location with a 65714 sqft space opened in December in northeast unincorporated Harris County, Texas. As of 2016, there were seven Joe V's stores. The "Joe V" name was based on the name of an executive of the company who was involved in the development of this store format.

True Texas BBQ
True Texas BBQ is a barbecue restaurant chain located inside select H‑E‑B stores.

Mexico

H-E-B opened its first Mexican store in 1997 in Monterrey. It has more than 50 locations in Mexico. H-E-B crossed the $1 billion annual sales mark in Mexico in 2012.

Litigation
In the mid-1980s, local grocery chains Handy Andy and Centeno joined a lawsuit against H-E-B citing unfair pricing practices. H-E-B eventually settled the suit out of court with Centeno in 1998 for $6.5 million and with Handy Andy for an undisclosed settlement amount. H-E-B has paid $12 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit accusing the San Antonio-based grocery chain of Medicaid fraud. Since at least 2006, according to the suit, H-E-B allegedly submitted to Texas Medicaid inflated prices on thousands of claims for prescriptions it filled so the company could obtain higher reimbursements than allowed.

Charitable activity
The company gives 5% of annual pretax earnings to causes in the areas in which it operates, including education and food banks. The Excellence in Education Awards are an annual charitable program maintained by H-E-B since 2000, in which teachers, administrators and schools in Texas are recognized, with awards totaling $500,000 in contributions in 2009.

H-E-B coordinated donations to relief efforts in the wake of a fertilizer plant fire and explosion in West, Texas. The company donated $50,000 to the American Red Cross and launched a checkstand campaign benefiting the organization to get the community involved in the relief effort. The company said in a news release 100% of the donations from the campaign will support the American Red Cross's disaster relief efforts. H-E-B also activated its emergency response units, sending the H-E-B Eddie Garcia Mobile Kitchen and water tanker to West, including donations of meals and water to the victims and first responders.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, H-E-B donated $100,000 toward relief efforts. Its campaign drive for customer contributions totaled $1,000,000. In addition, H-E-B's Mobile Kitchen and Disaster Relief Units distributed 10,000 hot meals to volunteers and victims in the affected areas in Texas.

After the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022, in which 19 children and two teachers were killed, H-E-B and the Butt family donated $10 million toward building a new school as founding donors. Initial participants joining the family included Texas architectural firm Huckabee and Texas general contractor Joeris General Contractors.

title: H-E-B


text:
Wandong Country Music Festival

The Wandong Country Music Festival was an annual country music festival held in Wandong, Victoria, 55 km north of the state capital, Melbourne. The earlier incarnation started in 1972, which was one of Australia's two largest country music festivals. In 1979 the festival's committee issued a 2× LP record by various artists, Wandong Country: the First Live Souvenir Recording of Australia's Top Country Artists, via the R.I.M.S. record label, Melbourne. Dwindling crowds in the early 1980s led to the festival's cessation.

In 2001 the 21st century version was inaugurated. The 2006 festival was held in early March at the LB Lavern Reserve in Dry Creek Crescent. As of 2012, the festival was no longer running, "due to circumstances beyond our control", according to the committee's website.

title: Wandong Country Music Festival


text:
User talk:BlueSkyMining

Welcome!

Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place  on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! -- Longhair | Talk 03:41, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * How to edit a page
 * Help pages
 * Tutorial
 * How to write a great article
 * Manual of Style

 * Hi there BlueSkyMining! I am interested in your contributions to the Chika Honda article, if you have the chance please respond (here is ok I will watch this page). Reason is I have been asked to help with a similar article dealing with a case in Japan, and I have learned there is a connection with Ms Honda.

RomaC 13:15, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Hi. What would you like to know? Would this article you're writing happen to be about Nick Baker?

BlueSkyMining 19:40, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

 * Hi there BlueSky and thanks for responding, sorry it took me awhile to get back to you. I have been watching/working on a number of prisoner support articles, I guess you know the list Disputed Convictions. And yes, one is Nick Baker, but that is one I have not touched yet. Do you know this case? (The Leonard Peltier article is another I am interested in.) Anyway I am trying to figure out how it might be possible to get NPOV when there are strong opinions and an article ends up in an edit war. Specifically I wonder how much space should be given to opinions and arguments, I am tending to think facts alone belong in Wikipedia but opinions tend to get included in these sort of articles. The Nick Baker article seems one of the worst in this regard. Thanks for any thoughts or help you might be able to offer as you have done fine work on this Chika Honda page.

RomaC 15:33, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

 * Yes I know the Nick Baker case somewhat. In fact, I created the Nick Baker page for Wikipedia at the request of a Japanese Chika Honda supporter. I was very reluctant because there was very little information about the prosecution's case but wanted to help even if the entry was not comprehensive. There was very little chance of providing a truly neutral picture without this information. With a lack of English-language sources and being unable to read Japanese, I posted a message on Nick Baker's mother's forum asking for input and left it at that. In its present state, it looks quite a mess of styles and reasoned viewpoints disguised as independent reporting, but to some extent I think this reflects the uncertainty of Nick's guilt to a detached observer. Yet as an information piece, I still think the differing viewpoints if supported by verifiable and well-known sources and edited into a tidier and more unified form would provide quite a useful and thought provoking exposition. Only Nick Baker himself could have the information to write a truly neutral piece.

 * In the case of the Chika Honda article, please bear in mind a few things. The incident happened thirteen years ago and does not arouse the same passions now as a result, Chika Honda is free now, new sources of information are virtually non-existent, and with the admission by Charlie in the Japanese media, it is difficult to argue against Chika Honda's innocence. The same could not be said of Nick Baker's case at this point.

 * The most useful sources I found were court transcripts and an unencumbered legal expert. I was very interested in this case because I had heard a very emotionally arousing radio program interviewing Chika about it which left me with a deep sense of shock and guilt. So I took the time to read through some of the court transcripts myself (although IANAL) to see how the prosecution were thinking and initiated a conversation with Professor Paul Wilson who had been asked to prepare a pardon application for Chika Honda. Professor Wilson was not being paid for preparing Chika's pardon application and I felt he had little to gain from being biased. Criticising the Australian legal system and media could even damage his professional reputation. These sources helped immeasurably at getting my head straight about how the court could have reached its conclusions.

 * I think is it primarily important to start from a position of intellectual respect for those both involved in the prosecution case, and who sit in judgement of the case. I wanted to convince myself I could feasibly draw the same conclusions as they did before writing the piece. So I would suggest going beyond the usual media articles and where possible to seek out people involved and trial transcripts. I think starting off the article with potent, reliable information most people are not likely to be able to find from a simple web search would remove some of the emotiveness from less-informed, potential critics. However having a hunger for new information whether it contradicts your own view or not is overriding. I think the Nick Baker case is a continuing saga and we need to keep our minds open to new information. If you had asked my thoughts about the Chika Honda case ten years ago, I probably would have said the same thing based on the information available. Finally, bear in mind that any standard you place on new information (e.g. web-verifiability, legitimacy of sources etc) you must apply to your own.

 * I hope this brain dump is some small use to you and let me know if I could provide any further assistance in your efforts.

BlueSkyMining

 * Thanks for taking the time to respond with so much helpful information. Sorry I hadn't realized you wrote the Baker article! Anyway I am thinking of going in and working on it and the Peltier article soon so when I do I'll let you know and hopefully you can give feedback.

RomaC 05:05, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Hello again BlueSky. Well, I have been making some progress on the Leonard Peltier article, but over at your Nick Baker article, a battle is raging. There was what I considered a fairly good edit done to restructure, add prosecution points, and add and other facts of the case while also cutting that inordinately long and ever-growing list of arguments and opinions from "detractors" and rebuttals from "supporters" and counter-rebuttals and counter-counter arguments and so on. But someone didn't like the new trim edit so now the article is entering what looks like a revert war.

Viewing your Chika Honda page history you've not caught much flak, you only get proofreaders here lucky you (I understand of course, as you wrote above it is a 13 year-old case and she is free now). The other disputed convictions articles (eg Schapelle Corby) seem to attract a great deal of negative energy, I wonder why. Last week I did manage to edit one article deftly enough to get both sides to agree to take down their red hand NPOV Dispute Banner, but that's another story. Anyway just letting you know what's up. RomaC 16:24, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Image:Nickbaker.jpg
You noted the image is "Reproduced with the permission of Iris Baker, Nick Baker's mother." - is it GFDL licensed? -- Tawker 07:14, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
 * It has been deleted because of invalid license. Stifle 15:13, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Disputed fair use rationale for Image:Graham Stafford.jpg
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If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it will be deleted within a couple of days according to our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 09:11, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Nomination of Chika Honda for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Chika Honda is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Chika Honda until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. RJFJR (talk) 14:12, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:BlueSkyMining


text:
User talk:DOrch

Welcome!

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title: User talk:DOrch


text:
User:Zzedd

I was working on a page for my suburb, Tarragindi.

title: User:Zzedd


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User:Chochopk

Introduction
Expertise:
 * Computer Science
 * Making instant noodles

Hobby:
 * Collect currency, primarily banknote after 1950
 * Digital photography
 * Metro-related
 * Map

Check this out: Uncyclopedia

Milestones

 * 2006-10-01
 * Failed to become an admin.

 * 2006-12-03
 * I have made 10,000 edits! It's on Max Hamburgers and the edit is to clean up links to SEK (Disambiguation pages with links). I sure want to go to Sweden and have 10 of those burgers!

 * 2007-06-08
 * I have made 20,000 edits! It's on Template:Districts of Khatlon and the edit is to help out User:Aelfthrytha, after s/he left me a message. I sure want to go to Tajikistan and tour around!

 * 2007-06-17
 * I have become a glorified janitor. Here is the request. At the time of promotion, I was the 1248th admin.

Standardization effort
Motto: Fix a class of a problem, not an instance of a problem. (This applies to Wikipedia too.)
 * Creator of Infobox Currency (See upper right)
 * Co-creator of the standardized table format of coins and banknotes. It has been adopted by Wikipedias in many other languages.
 * {| style="background: none"

 * - style="vertical-align: top;"
 * South Vietnamese đồng
 * vi:Đồng (tiền Việt Nam Cộng hòa)
 * South Korean won
 * ko:대한민국 원
 * Russian ruble
 * cs:Ruský rubl
 * et:Vene rubla
 * ro:Rublă rusă
 * ru:Рубль
 * Coins of the Czech koruna
 * no:Tsjekkiske korunamynter
 * Japanese yen
 * hu:Japán jen
 * su:Yén Jepang
 * Transnistrian ruble
 * it:Rublo transnistriano
 * }
 * Creator of Template:Navigational templates, which serves as a catalyst to improve root navigational templates.
 * it:Rublo transnistriano
 * }
 * Creator of Template:Navigational templates, which serves as a catalyst to improve root navigational templates.

Would like to visit
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title: User:Chochopk


text:
Alaskeros

The Alaskeros are Filipino seasonal migrant workers in the United States and their descendants. They worked in salmon canneries in Alaska during the summer, and on farms in Washington, Oregon, and California during the rest of the year. The Alaskeros were instrumental in the formation of the first Filipino-led union in the U.S., the Cannery Workers and Farm Laborers Union, Local 7 (Seattle, WA).

History
After Spain relinquished the Philippine Islands to the U.S. under the Treaty of Paris in 1898, Filipinos became American nationals and had the ability to migrate to the U.S. to find a better life, while providing cheap labor for the agriculture and fish cannery industries. A significant number first started being recruited for work by contractors for the salmon canneries and mines in Alaska. In the canneries, Filipinos worked with other groups of Asians loading and unloading trucks; and line jobs consisting of sorting, gutting, cleaning, and packing fish. The tasks of maintenance and operations were assigned to the whites. After negotiations of the Gentlemen's Agreement with Japan in 1908, along the Chinese Exclusion Act in effect, Filipinos arrived to the U.S. in significant numbers, taking the place of a large amount of the Chinese and Japanese labor workers in the canneries.

Life In the U.S.
Seattle's International District became the homequarters for Alaskeros during the cold months of the year. They would share hotel and boardinghouse rooms to save money before sailing back up north to work in the canneries from late spring to late summer. The population of Alaskeros in Washington grew between 1910 and 1930 from 1,700 to 3,500. Nearly 1,000 Filipinos were recruited by Japanese and Chinese nationals in 1921 to work in the Alaskan fisheries, and by the mid-1930s, they had become the dominant population in the canneries. Despite this fact, very few Filipinos became contractors, as they were halted from advancing past the position of foreman. This was mainly due to the fact of contractor positions were being held by mainly Japanese and Chinese employees. They entered into the canning industry before the Filipinos, and they held onto these jobs, while Filipinos worked as unskilled laborers in mechanized plants. Filipinos were dependent on whatever the Chinese and Japanese contractors made available to them, and their lack of proficiency in the English language as well as the difference in wages between the U.S. and the Philippines left them to be taken advantage of. The contractors would sell them items that were supposed to be compensated to the workers, such as food, work supplies, bedding and lodging. Sometimes, the contractors would take off without paying Filipino laborers their wages at the end of the season, leaving them without any money, and with no way to leave. Some Filipino foremen would charge the workers half a month's wages as a finder's fee for the cannery job. Unfortunately, mistreatment of fellow ethnics by more competent workers is a common occurrence in the migrant society.

Alaskeros faced less discrimination in Alaska than in the Lower 48, mostly due to the native Eskimos and the large Asian community that was already present in the area. Some cannery workers lived in Alaska permanently, marrying Eskimo women and establishing their own communities there. In 1935, they formed the Filipino Community of Juneau. Because of the images portrayed by American educators in the Philippines, some Filipinos were under the impression that a way into American society was easily obtained through marriage, often taking up with "women of color," and avoiding white women because of the social problems that might stir up. In California and Washington, white resentment against the Filipinos grew. Filipinos were often portrayed as sexual threats that wanted to mix with white and Mexican women, and concerns over "hybridization" caused several race riots to come to a head. Whites tried to drive out Filipinos from their communities. The incident near Watsonville, California, in 1930 was the most publicized- involving 400 white vigilantes targeted a Filipino dance club, beating many and killing one. The California state legislature responded by amending anti-miscegenation laws, prohibiting white-Filipino marriages, similar to the laws in 12 other U.S. states.

In 1953, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of union member Ernesto Mangaoang, who was jailed along with 30 other Alaskeros over communist implications, and established residency rights for thousands of Filipino Americans who entered the U.S. before the Philippines gained their independence in 1946.

The Great Depression
Wages for low-skilled jobs like those in the Alaskan cannery deteriorated after the stock market crash in 1929, in the onset of the Great Depression. Filipino students made up a large part of the cannery workers and were among those in the group that were hit the hardest, having to take up seasonal jobs elsewhere that left little time for classes or even no time at all for school. Luckily, because of the strong sense of community in the Filipino culture, many Alaskeros were able to rely on their traditional system of mutual aid to help pull them through these hard times. Explained by a Filipino scholar, " a Filipino can expect help and protection from his family and kin group, [but] he also has obligations to them." Americans were constantly worried about losing their jobs, and many people who would otherwise works together in groups competed with each other over jobs and security. In 1935, the Welch Bill was funded with $300,000 to repatriate Filipinos- offering to send them back to the Philippines free of charge should they volunteer to go back. Only 5% of Filipinos took up the offer. The ones that remained had their legal status changed by the U.S. government, through the Tydings-McDuffie Act, from nationals to aliens, rendering them exempt from any sort of government aid. This action also limited immigration of Filipinos to 50 per year. This did not restrict them from being able to serve in the U.S. military, or even being called up under the draft in 1942. These restrictions on immigration were dissolved in 1952 with the introduction of the McCarran-Walter Act, which also provided for the nonquota of immigration for the Filipino-Americans' relatives. Filipinos made up the second largest group of immigrants after Mexicans by 1975.

Unionization
Economic decline and a volatile work environment led Alaskeros to unionize and stand up for their rights. The Cannery Workers and Farm Laborer Union was created on June 19, 1933, in Seattle, representing Filipino laborers in Alaska's canneries. Shortly after, CWFLU was chartered as Local 18527 by the American Federation of Labor (AFL). By 1937, CWFLU had integrated with the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packinghouse, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAW) under the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), becoming UCAPAWA-CIO Local 7, turning into Local 37 of the International Longshoremen and Warehousemen Union (ILWU) by the summer of 1950.

In the beginning, the CWFLU was very slow to unite the Filipino community of laborers in the canneries. It wasn't until two union leaders were murdered in 1936 did Filipinos rally behind the union for higher wages, better hours, and sanitary working conditions for its members. By 1938, the contract system was eliminated, and from that point on, hiring for the canneries was done through the union hall. When WWII started, union activity was limited to Filipino workers, while the internment of Japanese workers was brought about. Many of the cannery workers were enlisting in the military or finding jobs in defense industries, while governmental emergency controls banned strikes and initiated a wage freeze. Another wave of immigrants arrived at the canneries in the 1970s, and a separate organization was established called the Alaska Cannery Workers Association (ACWA). Local 37 was reformed, and by 1980, reformers had gained control of the union, which was changed to IBU/ILWU, Region 37 in 1987, which was actually a merging of the Longshoremen's Union and the Inland Boatmen's Union of the Pacific.

Archives

 * Cannery Workers and Farm Laborers Union Local 7 Records. 1915-1985. 46.31 cubic feet.
 * Carlos Bulosan Papers, 1914-1976. 4.65 cubic feet, 17 microfilm reels.
 * Cindy Domingo Papers. 1978-2010. 27.9 cubic feet (28 boxes).
 * Chris D. Mensalvas Papers, 1935-1974. .25 cubic feet, 1 sound cassette.
 * Pacific Northwest Labor History Association Records. 1947-2015. 2.19 cubic feet (4 boxes).
 * Apolonio K. Buyagawan Papers. 1922-1975. .11 cubic foot plus 7 sound cassettes and 14 photographs.

title: Alaskeros