Fairmount CA

CNNs Ben Wedeman has been traveling in a convoy, accompanying Libyan fighters trying to take control of the final strongholds of deposed leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Al-Jaloud Airbase, Libya (CNN) — Im writing this in the dark on a mattress liberated from the officers quarters on the Jaloud Airbase outside the town of Birak Al-Shati, about 370 miles (600 kilometers) south of Tripoli. My concentration is broken by occasional blasts from small arms and old Russian or Chinese-made anti-aircraft guns.

They are not shots fired in anger, but rather to test the weapons after maintenance. At least thats the generous interpretation. Sometimes its just bored young men playing with very dangerous toys.

There is no electricity here, no running water, no cell phone service. I havent showered or shaved or slept in a bed in four days. Thanks to the mattress, at least something will be different tonight.

Dinner this evening was a communal bowl of rice with spicy tomato sauce shared with field commander Hmaida Al-Majri, a soft-spoken, deeply pious 34-year old former law professor, who nonetheless seems to enjoy the company of the distinctly impious, grizzled and dusty CNN crew.

Until a group of journalists from the Associated Press arrived this evening, we were the only media covering this major operation involving hundreds of fighters trying to take control of a huge chunk of this massive land. Not once has Cairo camerawoman Mary Rogers had to seethe over other press wandering into her shots. To have such a story all to ourselves has been a journalists dream, and we joked with Commander Al-Majri about having the fighters detain any journalists who showed up to ensure we could continue to label our reports exclusive.

It took two long days to get here. We left Tripoli around mid-day Tuesday with a group of about 40 fighters in pickup trucks and cars. The first night we met up with the main body of the column, about 500 men and around 100 vehicles, on the outskirts of the town of Shwairif. It was dark when we arrived, but we could see scattered camp fires and car lights all around us.

We were greeted enthusiastically by everyone, invited to join them for embekbeka, spicy Libyan pasta.

Real estate investment trust Sovran Self Storage Inc. this week completed a financing arrangement totaling $500 million in senior, unsecured debt.

The company will use proceeds from a 10-year, $100 million privately placed term note (the company’s “Series D” notes) and a seven-year, $125 million unsecured term loan provided by a syndicated bank group to repay its $150 million term loan maturing in June 2012 and the $71 million outstanding on its line of credit. The bank lending syndicate has also committed $100 million for a delayed draw note to provide funding for the company’s repayment of mortgage debt maturing in late 2011 and early 2012, as well as borrowings the company expects to incur later this year. The term of the note is seven years and is to be unsecured.

In addition, Sovran negotiated a five-year, $175 million unsecured line of credit, with an accordion feature of an additional $75 million, and an extension provision of up to two additional years.

Mamp;T Bank was the sole lead arranger and book-runner in the transactions; SunTrust Bank served as syndication agent; US Bank, NA and Wells Fargo Bank, NA each served as co-documentation agents. A total of 10 lenders participated in the syndication.

The $100 million of Series D notes bear interest at 5.54 percent for their 10-year term. Sovran has entered into interest-rate swap contracts that effectively fix the interest rate on the $125 million bank group term note at 4.37 percent, payable over its seven-year term. The $100 million delayed draw note is priced at LIBOR plus 2 percent. The company expects to enter into interest-rate swap contracts that are expected to fix the rate on this note for the next six years.

“This financing package provides us with greater capacity and flexibility, and extends and smoothes our debt maturity dates through 2021,” said David Rogers, chief financial officer. “We’re appreciative of the support that the institutional lenders and our bank group have shown.”

Sovran will incur a one-time charge of approximately $6 million ($0.22 per share) in the third quarter relating to the early termination of interest-rate swap agreements and unamortized costs associated with the repayment of the $150 million term note. Interest expense in 2012 is expected to be reduced by approximately $3.2 million from current year levels as a result of repaying the higher rate existing term loan and mortgage debt.

Interest expense for the balance of 2011 is expected to remain unchanged from guidance previously given. While Sovran will pay a lower rate on the term portion of its debt, it’s replacing $71 million of short-term, lower-cost line-of-credit debt with fixed-rate, albeit higher cost, term debt.

Sovran Self Storage Inc. is a self-administered and self-managed equity REIT that acquires and manages self-storage facilities. The company operates 371 facilities in 24 states.

Dont be surprised if the hunters in your life seem delightedly
dizzy. The merry mash-up of fall hunting seasons is underway.

Hunting began Thursday for ruffed grouse and several other small
game species.

The audience laughed when five performers dressed head to toe in blue spandex danced with large red exercise balls in Ohio Wesleyan Universitys Chappelear Drama Center.

The dancers from the Inlet Dance Theater performed a show as part of the annual Performing Arts Series (PAS) on Saturday at 8 p.m.

Each year, the PAS committee picks a series of professional performing artists to perform annually. According to the PAS website, the series is committed to providing outstanding and entertaining performers for the Ohio Wesleyan and central Ohio communities.

Elane Denny-Todd, professor of theatre and dance, is a member of the PAS committee. In an e-mail interview, she said the performances they choose, expands our campus-wide exposure to the arts, and, as a liberal arts university, experiencing as wide a range of the arts as possible is vitally important to students learning.

Often the PAS Committee picks artists who have direct connections with OWU, Denny-Todd said. The Inlet Dance Theater has several.

One of its company members, Joshua Brown, who performed on Saturday, is an OWU alumnus.

The Inlet Dance Theater is a modern dance company from Cleveland, Ohio.

Denny-Todd said, (The Inlet Dance Theater) is a remarkably unique performance dance company that has a fast and growing reputation.

Junior Kathleen Dalton received a TIPIT grant this past summer to participate in Inlets Summer Dance Intensive.

The intensive is an annual fee-based summer program the company hosts for dancers of all ages.

Dalton said the program was special and unlike any dance program she had ever participated in.

The company members really get to know you and tailor the classes to your personal wants and needshellip; to help you grow as a person, she said.

According to inletdance.org, Inlet Dance Theaters aim is to use dance for personal development in a number of ways and to create and perform innovative dance and movement theatre at a high level of artistry, speak creatively about human life issues.

Dalton said she could see those goals in the training she received.

Students taking OWU dance classes were required to attend the performance. Senior Katrina Hansen said she is enrolled in the beginning dance technique class.

She said seeing the performance improved her understanding of what Marin Leggat, assistant professor of theatre and dance, is seeking to teach them.

Hansen said she was impressed by the dancers strength and ability to perform. She also said the content of many of the dances was out of the ordinary.

The OWU performance showcased seven inlet dancers in nine separate dances, each with a different theme.

Michael Wickendens adventures in plant-hunting

Stephen Lacey finds out about Michael Wickendens adventures in
plant-hunting and the muddy waters of copyright
.

By John Thompson

Special to the Star-Telegram

During a Chamber of Commerce meeting in Hamilton in 1967, manager Don Haile and those gathered were trying to think of ways to draw business to this central Texas town.

We didnt have enough deer at that time, but we did have lots of doves around, so we began to work on that angle, Haile recalled.

Chamber officials canvassed landowners and found about 12 to 15 who were willing to day lease their fields to hunters for $5 per gun.

The chamber was to act as the clearinghouse. Its job was to scatter the hunters across the county according to the number of hunters and availability of birds. For this to work something was going to have to pull the hunters out of the Metroplex, and thats where the outdoor writers in Fort Worth and Dallas helped. I heard from Haile near the start of that season and agreed to come hunting after opening weekend.

I was fortunate enough to be the first one. Haile ushered me out to the Pottsville area farm of HT Rea, who had scattered round bales of hay in the field to act as cover for the hunters. It was a nice touch, but it really wasnt needed. There were so many birds in the air it was difficult to pick out a single target.

Haile said my following column set off the stampede. Hunters poured into Hamilton, putting some needed cash into the pockets of the landowners, and boosting the communitys economy.

The following year other writers brought more exposure that really turned out the hunters.

Shortly afterward the city began to sponsor the Hamilton County Dove Festival over Labor Day weekend. It turned out to be the biggest thing in the county, peaking in the mid-1970s with 75 or so landowners participating.

This past week I traveled to Hamilton to renew an old friendship with Haile, maybe hunt a little, and talk about the days when two much younger guys were in on the start of something big.

Haile remembered two factors that began the decline of the wild hunting days.

When they started letting the hunters shoot in the mornings as well as the afternoons, the doves were pressured so much they began to move out of the good hunting fields, he said.

Full-day assaults pushed the doves more and caused them to leave the fields or even the county to other areas with less pressure.

Also about this time, less and less grain was being planted. Without the grain fields there was less incentive for the birds to stick around once the shooting started.

But dont take this as a death notice on Hamilton County dove hunting. In most years there are still lots of doves in that area. While Haile and I were visiting, we were joined by Kenneth Miller of the Hamilton Herald-News. During the dove hunting boom his father, Bob, was the editor/publisher of the paper.

Miller said there were some hot spots on the season opener this year, as usual, and many hunters took their limits in short order. Though Hamilton has probably lost its title as the Dove Hunting Capital of Texas, there are still big numbers of birds in that area.

Unfortunately, this was not a big year for dove hunting anywhere in North Texas. Our drought and record-busting heat have hindered dove propagation, and if there are birds north of us they havent made an appearance as yet.

Haile has promised to let me know if the birds show up this year, and he still keeps a list of places visiting hunters can contact for day leases.

Perhaps dove hunters should keep Hamilton in mind as they move farther from the Metroplex to find decent opportunities. They still have some pretty good hunting in that area, and lots of welcoming landowners.

Looking for comments?

Its amazing how quickly this week goes by every year, but then, film festivals dont last forever; they strut and fret their hour upon the stage, and then are heard no more. My lineup today was bookended by two films that, in very different ways, examine the transience of artistryâ??both period pieces, one with an eye on goofy fun and the other eager to make its mark on film history.

Lets start with the larky one. Roland Emmerichs Shakesperean-authorship thriller Anonymous stars Rhys Ifans as the tortured Earl of Oxford, whose station in life prevents him from putting his name on anything so vulgar as a play; therefore, he needs a front. While mainstream scholarship generally confirms Shakespeares authorship, if you had to make a film that reduces the career of the worlds greatest playwright to a series of conspiracies, double-crosses, swordplay, torrid affairs and assorted skullduggery, then the man who made Independence Day isnt the worst choice to direct it. After an excruciatingly overwrought interrogation scene at the beginning, the movies steady supply of tongue-in-cheek humor kicks in; there have been few moments at this festival funnier than the scene in which Oxfords wife catches her husband at work. (My God, youreâ?¦writing again!)

The Turin Horses goals are, to put it mildly, loftier. The title refers to an animal once encountered by Nietzsche; soon after, the philosopher was diagnosed with mental illness. Director BÃla Tarr (the great, 7.5-hour, bleakly funny Sátántangó) wants to know what happened to the horse. As in Robert Bressons classic Au Hasard Balthazar, we see existence as experienced through the eyes of an animal and its owners. Bressons film centered on a baptized donkey; Tarrs, on the other hand, exists in a godless, indifferent world, where the father and daughter who tend the horse never leave home and instead are seen, over the course of two and a half hours of stark black-and-white, engaging in repetitive tasksâ??getting out of bed, eating potatoes and so on. This sort of studied blankness can be intellectually defensible; see Cristi Puius Aurora, which shows viewers long stretches of nothingness and then retroactively imbues them with significance. But to my mind, the structure in The Turin Horse isnt actually particularly innovative, and the humorlessness makes the film punishing to watch. After the movie ended, Tarr assured a bleary-looking audience that the horse, at least, is in good shape today. She is pregnant, he told the crowd.

The best film Ive seen in this late stretch of the festival is Terence Daviess The Deep Blue Sea, an adaptation of Terence Rattigans play (previously filmed in 1955 with Vivien Leigh) about a woman (Rachel Weisz) whose fling with an RAF pilot (Tom Hiddleston) leaves her torn between her new beau and her wealthy, much older husband (Simon Russell Beale). The source material isnt going to strike anyone as timeless, but the way Davies shoots it is extraordinary. His style is always lush and fragmentary, but here theres a real sense of old-Hollywood craftsmanship; the simple way Weisz is filmed lighting a stove, for instance, conveys all the information we need and nothing more. Youd never guess that this was written for the stage, and the material dovetails nicely with the concerns of Daviess autobiographical films (Distant Voices, Still Lives; The Long Day Closes), which likewise explore Catholic guilt, the difficulty of reconciling social constraints and physical passion, and classical artistry. The use of Samuel Barbers Concerto for Violin and Orchestra gives the proceedings a rich sense of melancholy that makes even some perfunctory exchanges seem like matters of life and death.

A bitter trial that rattled the normally quiet world of mutual funds came to an unusual end on Friday, as a jury awarded Jeffrey E. Gundlach, a star bond fund manager, millions of dollars in unpaid compensation even though it found him liable for breaching his fiduciary duty and stealing trade secrets at his former firm, Trust Company of the West.

Jurors took two days to find Mr. Gundlach and three co-defendants liable for taking trade secrets from Trust Company of the West, known as TCW, after he was fired in December 2009. It also found all four liable for breaching their fiduciary duty to TCW and Mr. Gundlach liable for interfering with investor contracts.

But, in a twist, the jury awarded no damages to TCW for the breach and contract claims. Instead, the jury awarded Mr. Gundlach and his co-defendants $66.7 million in damages related to a countersuit he filed against TCW, in which he contended that he was owed millions of dollars in fees for the funds he ran.

Although they held Mr. Gundlach liable for theft of trade secrets, the jurors found that the documents and electronic files he and his co-defendants took out of TCW were not stolen maliciously. Judge Carl J. West, who presided over the case in Los Angeles County Superior Court, will determine damages for the trade secrets issue at a later date. TCW said on Friday that it was seeking $89 million in that claim.

Lawyers for both sides rushed to claim victory after the verdict was read. Susan Estrich, a lawyer for TCW, said the jury had effectively validated the firmâ??s claims.

â??We came in here focused on basic principles and wrongful conduct,â? Ms. Estrich said. â??We brought three claims, and the jury found liability on all three claims.â?

But Mr. Gundlachâ??s camp, $66.7 million richer, was celebrating, too.

â??We are pleased that the jury agreed with us that neither Jeffrey Gundlach nor any of our clients did anything that resulted in monetary harm to TCW,â? said Brad Brian, a lawyer for Mr. Gundlach. â??Weâ??re equally pleased that the jury awarded Mr. Gundlach and our other clients the wages that were owed to them.â?

TCW has not said whether it plans to appeal the verdict on Mr. Gundlachâ??s back pay.

The mixed verdict capped a trial that lasted nearly two months and seemed, at times, more like an argument between jilted lovers than a white-collar employment dispute.

Lawyers for TCW accused Mr. Gundlach of conspiring to sabotage his firm, comparing him to Gordon Gekko, the fictional buyout villain played by Michael Douglas in the movie â??Wall Street.â? Mr. Gundlachâ??s lawyers, in return, asserted that TCW had plotted to fire him for months and wanted to save money on the lucrative fees it owed him.

Over the course of six weeks of testimony, witnesses in the trial described Mr. Gundlach, who was named fixed-income manager of the year by Morningstar in 2006, as a â??cultural cancerâ? who berated colleagues in the open and displayed unchecked arrogance. In closing arguments, lawyers for TCW presented a slideshow of some of Mr. Gundlachâ??s greatest hits, including e-mails in which he referred to himself as the pope and to Philip A. Barach, his co-manager, as â??the B team.â?

TCW contended that Mr. Gundlach and his associates stole client information and proprietary trading systems in order to set up a competing firm, DoubleLine Capital. More than 40 employees from TCW followed Mr. Gundlach to DoubleLine, which was running less than a month after Mr. Gundlach was fired from TCW.

Among those employees were Cris Santa Ana, Barbara VanEvery and Jeffrey Mayberry, all of whom were Mr. Gundlachâ??s co-defendants.

On Friday, Mr. Gundlach, dressed in a pinstripe suit and a bright orange tie, looked straight ahead as the juryâ??s verdict was read, according to a live feed of the trial provided by CourtroomView.

For industry watchers and nervous investors, the juryâ??s decision came as something of a relief.

â??This divorce has been messy, and itâ??s a good thing that the investment teams can now go back to managing portfolios without this distraction hanging over them,â? said Miriam Sjoblom, a bond fund analyst with Morningstar. â??To the extent DoubleLine shareholders were worried about damages from this suit impacting the resources of the firm, this verdict should assuage those fears.â?

Mr. Gundlach, an avid art collector and unabashed bon vivant, has done well since leaving TCW. His DoubleLine total return bond fund is among the top performers in its class, and the firm announced on Friday that its overall assets under management had passed $16 billion, a stunningly quick gain for a firm less than two years old.

TCW, a unit of the French bank SociÃtà GÃnÃrale, struggled in the immediate wake of Mr. Gundlachâ??s departure. The firm lost billions in assets after he left, even though it acquired a competitor, Metropolitan West, to replace his team.

Today, TCW is on the mend. It has about 600 employees, and the firmâ??s assets under management have grown to $120 billion. In a fact sheet distributed to reporters during the trial, the firm said it had developed â??a more collegial, collaborative workplace cultureâ? since 2009.

But that newfound collegiality has not extended to Mr. Gundlach, as evidenced by the angry and often brutal case the firm made against its former star. Experts say that although the trial could have been a landmark employment case about the merits and dangers of competing against a former employer, it turned out to be nearly all sound and fury.

â??This is a split-the-baby decision,â? said Jill E. Fisch, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. â??It didnâ??t resolve any questions about how much you can compete, and it seems like it was a long expensive battle that could have been avoided.â?

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 21, 2011

An article on Saturday about the verdict in a legal dispute between Jeffrey E. Gundlach, a bond fund manager, and his former employer, Trust Company of the West, misstated one of the juryâ??s findings. The jury found Mr. Gundlach and three co-defendants liable for breaching their fiduciary duty to Trust Company, known as TCW, not their fiduciary duty to investors.

The face and appearance of the traditional comic book has, over the decades, changed dramatically to match the tastes and entertainment demands of an increasingly sophisticated and broad-based audience. The same can be said for animation and cartoons. And the comic book, keeping in step with the movies, has given us acts of tremendous heroism by larger-than-life characters dedicated to keeping people safe from evil and disaster.

The history of the medium, too, has survived the condemnation of the moral right and the Cold War censorship of the 1950s while continuing to grow artistically and change not only in appearance but in the manner in which they are produced.

Now, with the input and popularity of Japanese manga and anime, comic-book innovation has driven to exciting new levels that make it more than just fun for kids. Weve come a long way from Steamboat Willie and Lil Abner, lets just say. And finally we get to talk about Ben Caldwell, whose current exhibit of ink and pencil drawings is on view through Sept. 2 at the Yocum Institute for Arts Education in Wyomissing.

Caldwell, in all of his skills, is a cartoonist and animation developer who utilizes every resource at his command in order to convey a strong, visually compelling narrative in cartoon form.

He is an obsessive and consummate draftsman, who during the course of our conversation was drawing into a small tablet all the while. Well versed in the history of comics, he is familiar with those of the past and is the illustrator of such graphic novels as the vampire saga of Dracula, the Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter and the further adventures of Wonder Woman.

This exhibit displays many first-draft ideas and is filled with examples of his work, from minor sketches to completed, full-color pages of exacting precision. Presently, his style echoes a combination of wistful Disney-esque wide-eyed characters, sweeping perspectives and an energetic manga sense of leaping action. He uses a clean, clear and crisp calligraphic line that never appears disjointed or awkward regardless of the fantastical subject matter.

He has also designed toys (one on display) and was nominated for the Russ Manning Award in 2005 for his series of graphic novels titled Dare Detectives. He has also completed a series of how-to books on drawing action figures, some of which are on view in a glass case, and he is working on a version of French manga.

As a creative storyteller, he believes that comic books should not be a staid sort of block-by-block storyboard, but they should incorporate the entire layout as an artistic device to enhance the readers perception of the narrative. In this manner, his work is vividly cinematic as he directs the content visually.

Caldwell graduated from the Parsons School of Design for illustration and the Eugene Lang College for Ancient History. He recently moved to Reading from New York with his family.

This is an enjoyable exhibit of elegant and innovative drawing that, aside from the artists obvious skill, gives insight to the inner understanding and workings of how comics are made.

Contact Ron Schira: life@readingeagle.com.

Fall turkey hunting season is in full swing throughout Michigan (September 15 – November 14). / For the Enquirer