Category Archives: History

By Amanda Haffele

Did you know plastic was a word that originally meant pliable and easily shaped?

Today plastic refers to a type of material, the polymer. Polymers are long chains of atoms arranged in repeating patterns. Synthetic or manmade polymers are made from carbon atoms provided by petroleum and other fossil fuels. The length and patterns of each polymer are what makes them strong, lightweight, and flexible, in essence, plastic.

In 1869, John Wesley Hyatt, invented the first synthetic polymer to reduce the demand for ivory used in billiards. The creation of different types of plastics expanded throughout the 1900s. However, the production of plastic didnt really take off until World War II. During this time period, the need to preserve scarce resources is what drove the production of plastic to an all-time high.

According to the Chemical Heritage Foundation, plastic production increased by 300 percent during the war. In 1935, Wallace Carothers created nylon to replace silk, making it a big player in plastic production during this time. Nylon was used to make ropes, parachutes, body armor, helmets, and other items.

Fast forward to 2021 and plastic is everywherefrom our electronics to appliances to dishes to our vehicles. Plastic has shaped the way we function as a society. It is lighter weight than other materials, therefore, reducing transportation costs and greenhouse gas emissions. Its strong, durable, and relatively inexpensive to make.

However, we must keep in mind that plastic is a manmade material which means it cant break down into anything Mother Nature can utilize. It takes approximately 450 years for a plastic bottle to break down into tiny pieces of plastic, but it never truly goes away.

What can we do? Now thats simple. Buy plastic that we know can be reused or recycled or try to avoid it altogether.

In our community, we can recycle plastic bottles, jugs, and tubs curbside.

Why do we only recycle bottles, jugs, and tubs? Markets and equipment are why. These types of plastic containers have the highest resale value, are the easiest materials to process at a Material Recovery Facility or recycling facility, and have reliable and available markets (meaning a company will buy these in large quantities to be made into new items).

This is due partially to their uniform shape, streamlining of modern technology, and the fact that these materials have been recycled for a longer period of time, therefore, making equipment more efficient and widely available.

Not sure if an item can be recycled? Give us a call and well help you determine the best disposal solution, (715) 346-6297.

Amanda Haffele is the solid waste director for Portage County

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Column: The history of plastic will likely surprise you - Point/Plover Metro Wire

Milwaukee Fire Chief Aaron Lipski on Friday nominatedDeputy Chief Sharon PurifoySmoots to be the department's assistant chief. If approved, Purifoy-Smoots will become the highest ranking Black, female fire official in city history.

Recognizing the historicmoment, the Milwaukee Fire Department opted to hold the announcement event at the Wisconsin Black Historical Society.

"It is monumental for not just a single person, not just a single department. Not just a single city. It's monumental for a fire service, monumental for our state," said Lipski.

Cavalier Johnson, the first African Americanto be elected mayor of Milwaukee, attendedLipski's announcement and talked about the significance of representation in positions of authority.

"You're opening doors and opening eyes to so many people, so many kids, kids who live in neighborhoods like this, about the possibilities, because they can see their own reflection in you," Johnson said.

"This promotion I think reflects her background, her hard work, as well as her accomplishments," he added.

Purifoy-Smoots has been with the fire department since 2003. She started as a firefighter and moved up the ranks eventually becoming a battalion chief in 2019, and served most recently as deputy chief of emergency medical services.

She has also served as a fire cadet instructor and as director of recruitment.

Purifoy-Smoots was never recruited by the fire department. She took a test offered by the city and thought she did well but didn't hear anything about her resultsfor 13 years.

She credits the Milwaukee Brotherhood of Firefighters a faction of Black firefighters within the fire department for filing an EEOC complaint in the 1990s which providedopportunity for people of color and women to join the department.

"If you would have known me 20 some years ago, firefighting was never in my future. But I have done really well in the career, moved up the ladder, and it wasn't by me doing this by myself," said Purifoy-Smoots.

Black women, and women in general, have not historically made up a large portion of firefighters in Wisconsinand nationally. Purifoy-Smoots said she recognizes her responsibility to provide opportunities for others.

"I am glad that I am first. But, I know my first is not going to mean much to me unless I am directly responsible in getting the second and the third and the fourth here," she said.

Lipski's nomination will need to be approved by the city's Fire and Police Commission.Dana World-Patterson, a member of the commission, attended Friday's event, indicating a likely favorable review from the commission. Lipski went as far to call her a "shoo-in."

More: 'It's about time': Milwaukee reacts to Cavalier Johnson's milestone as city's first elected Black mayor

More: Fire and Police Commission appoints Aaron Lipski to four-year term as fire chief

Contact Drake Bentley at (414) 391-5647 orDBentley1@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DrakeBentleyMJS.

Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.

Originally posted here:

This Milwaukee Fire Department veteran is poised to become the highest-ranking Black female fire official in city history - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

For the third time in their history, the Phoenix Suns will face the Dallas Mavericks in the playoffs, this time locking horns in the 2022 Western Conference Semifinals. While they are 868 flight miles away and have played in the same conference since the Mavericks entered the NBA in 1980, these two franchises do not have a lengthy and distinguished postseason history.

But they do have history. And were are diving head first into that history. Grab your Spanarkel. Youre going to need it.

These two teams have met a total of 168 times in the regular season, with the Suns holding a 94-74 advantage. Weve come a long way since the two teams first tipped off on October 21, 1980.

Dallas leading scorer that night was Jim Spanarkel with 22 off the bench. Now thats a name, right? And makes the above reference makes sense. Nice call back. Phoenix took the game 111-99, led by 21 from Dennis Johnson and six Suns in double figures.

Throughout most of the history of both of these franchises, while one was enjoying success and postseason participation, the other was navigating the draft and attempting to improve their team. The Mavericks did not make the playoffs for the first three seasons of their existence which coincided with the Phoenix Suns final breath of the Walter Davis/Alvan Adams era.

In 1984, Mark Aguirre led the Mavericks to their first playoff participation, the same year a surprising 41-41 Suns club advanced to the Western Conference Finals.

Both teams avoided each other in the playoffs that season, and they would not meet in the postseason during the 1980s. Why? Because the sun was setting on Phoenix and rising in Dallas. The cocaine-fueled 80s werent kind to the Suns, and as drug scandals hit Phoenix, the team went into rebuild mode.

Dallas, however, was getting stronger.

This culminated in a Western Conference Finals appearance for their franchise in the 1988 playoffs. A team that had Aguirre, Rolando Blackman, Derek Harper, Sleepy Sam Perkins, and Detlef Schrempf would push Magic Johnson and the Lakers to a Game 7. They lost to LA, who won the championship, and after five consecutive playoff appearances without anything to show for it, Dallas was preparing to change directions.

While Dallas was shipping Mark Aguirre to the Detroit Pistons, who proved to be the missing link in the Motor Citys championship aspirations, the Suns had acquired Kevin Johnson and drafted Dan Majerle. In Phoenix, arrows were pointing up, as the Mavericks faded into obscurity.

They didnt match up in the playoffs during the Barkley Era because, in 1992-93, the Mavericks won only 11 games. 9 of those games were won with Gar Heard as their head coach, of 1976 NBA Finals fame. If you are old enough to remember the 90s, youd recall that Dallas was kind of a joke during that time frame. Dallas did not win one playoff game in the entire decade.

That changed when Mark Cuban bought the team in 2000.

Dallas had drafted Dirk Nowitzki with the 9th pick in the 1998 NBA Draft, and after winning 19 games his rookie season, he and Steve Nash began developing chemistry in 1999-00. That team went 40-42, but 53-29 in 2001-02.

They were on to something in Dallas. Meanwhile, Phoenix was floundering with Backcourt 2000, and missed the playoffs two out of three seasons. Dallas made a Western Conference Finals appearance against the Spurs in 2003, but after a First Round exit in 2004, changes were seemingly needed in Dallas.

And that change was to not keep Steve Nash.

That summer, he (Cuban) really didnt make a big effort to keep me, Nash told Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes in the All The Smoke podcast, via the Dallas News. I think he thought he didnt want to overpay I think hed overpaid a few guys, and didnt want to overpay an aging point guard and thats how I ended up in Phoenix, really. I dont think he was confident in my future at that point.

Entering the 2004-05 season, both teams were finally playing well enough to make the postseason. And for the first time ever, they would meet, only 10 months after Nash chose Phoenix over Dallas...

In Phoenix, this marked the beginning of the Seven Seconds or Less Era. In 2005, they made their first playoff appearance with a groundbreaking offense that altered the trajectory of NBA history. After beating the Grizzlies in the first round, they faced a playoff-tested Dallas Mavericks club that had parted ways with Steve Nash the previous off-season. It was an opportunity for Nash to seek retribution on the team that had refused to re-sign him.

The Suns easily took Game 1 127-102 behind a dominant 40-point, 16-rebound performance by Amare Stoudemire. Joe Johnson had 25 points, Shawn Marion had 23 points and 11 boards, and Nash added 11 points and 13 assists. It was prior to this game that Steve Nash stood in the middle of America West Arena and hoisted the Most Valuable Player trophy, presented by David Stern.

We were reminded that extreme highs may suddenly turn into terrible lows. If youre unfamiliar with the Suns Cant Have Nice Things narrative, here is a chapter in the history class.

The pendulum swung back the other way for Game 2 as the Mavericks tied the series with a 108-106 victory, but the team took a massive hit in the game.

With 19.7 seconds left in the second quarter, trailing 54-45 to the Mavs, Joe Johnson received the ball in transition and went up for a dunk. Mavericks forward Jerry Stackhouse attempted to stop Johnsons slam attempt near the rim, but Johnson landed awkwardly on his face.

It frustrates me to this day to see that play and Jerry Stackhouse will forever be on my list. The final diagnosis: an right orbital bone fracture. Surgery was required and Johnson wouldnt play again in the series.

Paul Coro, then writer for the Arizona Republic, noted, All season, youre kind of just waiting for something to go wrong. The Suns were playing a real short rotation, so they didnt have a ton of depth. Theyre going super small, and now you lose a big guard who has made up for a lot of your frontcourt size. There was a lot of questions about whether that was gonna be the end of the road now.

Game 3 went to Phoenix, winning easily 119-102 in Dallas. Marion, who had been 7-of-17 on three-pointers in the previous six postseason games, compensated for Johnsons absence by hitting 5-of-7 from deep and scoring 21 points. Phoenix was 11-of-22 on three-pointers as a team and took a 2-1 series lead.

Dallas once again responded, posting a 10-point win in Game 4, 119-109, and tying the series. Steve Nash dropped 48 points (on 20-of-28 shooting) for the Suns, but received no help from their bench. The reserves scored a total of 3 points. We felt that if we could allow [Nash] to score and not have all those other guys become involved in the offense, it would give us a better chance to win the game, Jerry on my list Stackhouse said after the game.

Meanwhile, Dirk got his groove back (he was averaging 24 points in the first 3 games, but on 29-of-66 shooting) as he went for 25 on 60% shooting. Josh Howard went for 29 points and 10 rebounds, and Stackhouse added 22 from the bench.

It was the fourth-quarter efforts of Jim Jackson, former member of the Mavs, that pushed the Suns to a 114-108 victory in Game 5. He went 7-of-8 from the field in the fourth, scoring 15 of his 21 points in the final period as he filled in for Joe Johnson. Steve Nash was in MVP Mode as he posted a triple-double; 34 points, 12 assists, and 13 rebounds.

Mavericks head coach Avery Johnson said after the game, Obviously, Nash still hurt us in the first half, but he was a monster in the second half. We came into tonights game trying to cut off some of his passing angles. We did not follow the game plan, and they just shredded us, shredded us to pieces.

The Suns closed out the series in Dallas with a memorable Game 6 performance by Steve Nash. The Mavericks were in control for the majority of the game, but a furious fourth-quarter by the MVP put the Suns in position to clinch the series. Credit the likes of JAson Terry for hitting clutch shots, but no one was better than Steve on this day.

Nash scored eight points in the final minute of regulation, including an iconic three-pointer with 5.7 seconds left that forced overtime.

That fire carried over into overtime and the Suns clinched the series with a 130-124 win.

While the Suns moved on to face San Antonio, and Dallas was left wondering why they let Steve Nash leave, the Suns were unable to overcome Joe Johnsons injury in Games 1 and 2. Although he returned in Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals, the San Antonio Spurs were already up 2-0 and would go on to win the series in five games.

Ill always remember this series with resentment. Due to Joe Johnsons injury, Steve Nash was pushed to perform at a higher level, and winning this series was crucial. However, the loss of Johnson robbed the club a chance at a championship. Johnson agrees. Theres no way you can tell me we wouldnt have been NBA champions if I hadnt got hurt, Johnson once stated.

One year later, the two teams would meet again in the playoffs, this time with a trip to the Finals on the line.

The Suns were coming off of a 54-28 finish in the regular season, good for second seeding in the Western Conference, and did it despite only 3 games from Amare Stoudemire that season. New additions Raja Bell and Boris Diaw had seamlessly integrated with the team and, due to his ability to lead the team to success without STAT, Steve Nash won his second consecutive MVP Award for his efforts.

Dallas was stronger than the year prior, finishing with the second best record in the NBA but the fourth overall seed due to San Antonios winning of the Southwest Division with the best overall record and led the league in offensive rating. Continuity and depth were their strengths as this Mavs team was battle tested and hungry for a chance at a title. They swept the Grizzlies in the First Round and, in an epic second round matchup, faced the #1 seed in the Spurs. 41 points from Tim Duncan couldnt stop Dirk and crew from winning Game 7, 119-111.

Phoenix had their hands full in the First Round, tasked with dispatching the scoring champion, Kobe Bryant, and a post-Shaq Lakers team. Phoenix did so in seven games, but DAntonis short rotations meant miles on the team, and by the time the Suns beat the Los Angeles Clippers in the Semifinals also a seven game series Steve Nash had played 568 minutes in the playoffs.

Playing Game 1 in Dallas, because even though Phoenix had the higher seeding, Dallas had the better record and therefore homecourt (sometimes I just dont understand the NBA), the Suns found themselves down 9 points with 3:26 left to play in the game. Just a few moments prior, Phoenix was dealt a blow when Raja Bell had to leave the game with a strained left calf that turned out to be a slightly torn calf muscle. Its an injury that would keep him out until Game 4.

They ended the game on a 16-4 run, led by Steve Nash, who scored 10 of those points. Phoenix snatched home court by winning 121-118.

Game 2 saw Phoenix score a season-low 17 points in the first quarter and 36.4% from the field in the fourth. Phoenix entered the fourth with a 77-75 lead, but Dirk Nowtizkis 4-of-6 shooting, both from the field and from the line, led to 12 points. The Suns missed 13 of their last 18 shots in the game as they lost 105-98. Phoenix shot 25 less free throws than Dallas and the edge was 17-2 in Q4.

The third game of the series was another defensive victory for the Mavericks, holding the Suns to a playoff-low 88 points, as Dallas won 95-88. Dirk went for 28 points and 17 boards and the Mavs were playing physical and getting into the Suns heads.

When Josh Howard was called for a flagrant foul for hitting Tim Thomas in the face as the Phoenix forward drove to the hoop late in the first half, tempers boiled. As Thomas approached the foul line, he and Jason Terry exchanged shoves, resulting in technical fouls for both players. Were out there with our shoulders slumped, and were not smiling, Nash observed after the game. Were not fighting. Were not, you know, playing with the necessary fire it takes to win.

Raja Bell made his return for Game 4 and it was the spark needed to tie the series 2-2. Dirk went 3-of-13 shooting and the Suns returned the defensive favor to the Mavs, winning 106-86.

Sadly, it was the last win of the season for the Suns.

The teams returned to Dallas and the Mavs convincingly took Game 5, 117-101, behind a 50-burger from Dirk Nowitzki. The Suns had 20 points in the fourth. Dirk had 22.

Dallas won the series in Game 6, when, despite a 16-point lead early in the game, Phoenix couldnt overcome a problem that plagued them throughout the series: foul trouble. Dallas took 43 more FTA throughout the series, and their 31-20 advantage in Game 6 hindered the Suns from getting into any sort of rhythm. Dallas clinched the series with a 102-93 win.

Here we are, 16 years after the mid-2000s postseason battles, on a collision path for the chance to play in the Western Conference Finals. Its a rubber match, with the winner claiming a 2-1 lead in the history series between these two franchises.

Their history goes beyond just the playoffs, however. These franchises are forever tied due to personnel and draft day what ifs?.

What is interesting about the relationship between the Phoenix Suns and the Dallas Mavericks is how intertwined our personnel has been over the decades. Here is a list of players both franchises have shared:

Note that on the current Mavericks coaching staff is former Suns head coach Igor Kokoskov and former player Jared Dudley. Phoenix assistant Mark Bryant played 18 games for the Mavericks during the 2000-01 season.

For the first time in the franchises history, the Phoenix Suns were the first overall pick in the 2018 NBA Draft. The big question was who to draft. Would it be Deandre Ayton from the University of Arizona, who went to college nearby? Or would it be Luka Doncic, the young European prodigy with whom (then) head coach Igor Kokoshov had a relationship?

The Suns selected Ayton, and it was the Mavericks who moved up and got Luka from the Atlanta Hawks at number three. In that moment the Mavericks once again became a rival with a narrative.

Deandre Ayton played his first NBA game against Luka Doncic to start the 2018-19 season, with the Suns winning 121-100. It would be 1 of only 19 wins for Phoenix that season.

Since the 2018 NBA Draft the Phoenix Suns are 11-3 against the Dallas Mavericks. That includes 9 consecutive wins, which is the second longest such streak in the series between the two teams (Phoenix won 14 straight from 1992 to 1995).

But now the games will carry more weight to them. The two franchises have been on a postseason collision course since the 2018 NBA Draft, and in 2022, we are finally primed to see it occur.

I will always carry a special kind of disdain for the Dallas Mavericks. Sure, they didnt affect my 90s. Growing up they were never a foe, rather, they were a team that we sent players I liked via trade. I loved Michael Finley. AC Green was solid. Cedric Ceballos was another fan favorite. Sure we got Jason Kidd, but the Mavericks took Finley from us, who I thought was the future of the Suns.

The San Antonio Spurs will be remembered as the villain of the Seven Seconds or Less era. But Ill never forget the crushing blows dealt by the Mavericks, one delivered by Jerry Stackhouse and the other depriving us of a championship opportunity by defeating the Suns in the Western Conference Finals.

So here we are now. The Suns just won the most games in the history of the franchise. But in order to achieve the ultimate success, standing in front of them is that silver and royal blue.

Time to write the next chapter in the history of these two franchises. With a Spanarkel.

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An in-depth look at the history between the Phoenix Suns and Dallas Mavericks - Bright Side Of The Sun

VENICE It starts in the eyes: shy or seductive, gaping or sealed shut, aqueous frontiers between the mind and the world. There are the pupils of the German surrealist Unica Zrn, cohering out of dense, automatic black squiggles. The giant irises of Ulla Wiggen, each unique as a fingerprint and capable of unlocking a credit card or blocking passage across a border, painted in close-up on circular canvases. All over town, on palazzo-side posters and the hulls of the vaporetti, there are eyes announcing the 59th Venice Biennale: ghostly, milky corneas, drawn by the young Mexican artist Felipe Baeza, disembodied, floating in deep space.

Its a commonplace (and one you wont catch me using) to call an art exhibition, especially one as large as Venices, a feast for the eyes. The 2022 Biennale, or at least its central exhibition, is a feast of the eyes: a giant, high-spirited banquet of looking and scrutinizing. Eyes emerge as the key metaphor of a show thats all about bridging realms the brain and the social network, the dream and the ecosystem. The eyes here in Venice are portals to the unconscious but also analyzers of misrule. They stare out from paintings, bulge from videos, and on occasion (as in Simone Leighs bronze totem Brick House) clamp closed. We may be on display, but we are looking back, or looking inward.

This years edition of the worlds oldest and most important contemporary art exhibition has been organized with triumphant precision by the New York-based Italian curator Cecilia Alemani, whos mounted a major show in challenging circumstances: canceled studio visits, choked shipping routes, galloping insurance costs and, now, a land war 900 miles from the lagoon. Alemanis exhibition, titled The Milk of Dreams, was meant to open in May 2021. The coronavirus pandemic pushed both this show and Venices architecture biennial back a year, and shes made very good use of the delay.

Her challenges were not only logistical. For a while Ive felt that biennial exhibitions of contemporary art may have run their course. No coherent new style or movement will be emerging from our perpetually imitative present, and if you visit this years largely appalling national pavilions (the other half of the Venice Biennale, over which Alemani has no control), youll see what slim pickings contemporary art is offering up. So the curator and her team used their extra year to dip into the archives in 2020 Alemani co-curated an exhibition on the Biennales first 100 years and established a 20th-century lineage, notably through Surrealist and feminist traditions, for the themes of this show.

One of these Surrealist and feminist themes is that bodies and technologies cant be cleanly cleaved apart. Nature and society are always reshaping each other more than ever in time of climate crisis and in this show machines act like animals, bodies twitch like robots, flesh merges with prostheses, and metals and plastics keep drooping, leaking, melting.

Another theme is a reenchantment of our spiritless world to arrest the political and ecological crises that empire and patriarchy have reportedly consigned to us. If modern life stripped the divinity out of Venices altarpieces, and made art appreciation a secular enterprise, this show wants to turn the gondola back around. So prepare for a biennial chockablock with spirits and shamans, mutations and metamorphoses, where the world we live in for better, for worse; in beauty and in kitsch regularly takes a back seat to worlds beyond.

Junkies of recent continental and feminist philosophy will recognize the mood music: Rosi Braidottis theories of the posthuman, Silvia Federicis analyses of witch-hunting as gendered violence. And yet: When too many biennials let the labels do the theoretical heavy lifting, Alemanis selections are strongly opinionated and deftly chosen (though not without following some recent fashions: Indigenous cosmologies; weaving as metaphor for computer algorithm; two whole rooms filled with piles of dirt). They include participants from all over, notably Latin America, and never decline into the tokenism that afflicts so many European and American museums.

The show is heavy on painting return of the repressed, baby! and, despite its posthuman inquiries, light on new media. It has frequent surprises and moments of stunning bad taste, such as a sculptural suite by Raphaela Vogel of a cancerous penis on wheels paraded by 10 cadaverous white giraffes. (You read that right.)

All this without mentioning what, from a less subtle curator, would be the headline here: this is the largest Biennale since 2005, and some 90 percent of its artists are women. Just 21 of the 213 participants are men, and all are showing in the Arsenale, Venices former shipyard; in the classical galleries of the Giardini, the number of men is exactly zero. Elsewhere around Venice its still the old game, with concurrent exhibitions of Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz, Kehinde Wiley and other bombastic boys.

This Biennale would have been a failure if reversing the old gender bias were its mere endpoint. For Alemani, the exhibitions disproportion has a much more precise aim: reconstituting the past to let us see the present with keener eyes. She pulls this off primarily in five shows-within-the-show historical parentheses that frame her contemporary selections, each set off from the main flow via colored walls of dusty pink or robins egg blue. (The exhibition design this year is by the young Italian firm Formafantasma, whove subdivided and tamed the Arsenales tricky wide spaces.)

In the mustard gallery of the mini-show The Witchs Cradle, we meet women artists who used masquerades or fantasias to evade or deconstruct male stereotypes. They include the renowned Surrealists Leonora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning, Leonor Fini and Meret Oppenheim; Italians such as Benedetta, who redeployed Futurist drawing to new subconscious ends; and also many Black American women, including Josephine Baker, Augusta Savage and Laura Wheeler Waring, the last of whom drew Egyptian/Art Deco covers for W.E.B. Du Boiss journal The Crisis. This metaphysical tradition gets picked up today by the Portuguese-British pastelist Paula Rego, who emerges as a star of this Biennale with an entire gallery of her fraught scenes of domestic violence, where love and fear make humans act like dogs.

A second, delightful mini-show presents women artists who examined the topologies of vessels, bags, shells and containers: a beaded purse by Sophie Taueber-Arp, hanging nets by Ruth Asawa, punctured white plaster ellipses by Mria Bartuszov (eyes, eyes, eyes), and incredible papier-mch models of the pregnant human uterus by Aletta Jacobs, a pioneering 19th-century Dutch doctor. (Let me add that, in literal terms, this is the deadest biennial Ive ever seen, with just under half the participants in the grave.) The contemporary Thai artist Pinaree Sanpitak, who paints hazy shapes that might be leaves, or breasts, or tear ducts, offers a beautiful contemporary exploration of forms with indistinct interiors and exteriors.

Prosthetics human inventions that make human boundaries indistinct are a related leitmotif. I found myself engrossed here in the life of Anna Coleman Ladd (1878-1939), an American sculptor who used her classical training to craft gelatinous facial protheses, of latex and painted metal, for maimed World War I veterans. That intertwining of flesh and technology ripples through the sculptural works in the show: whether Hannah Levys drooping silicone on spidery metal legs, Julia Phillipss bronze armature supporting a cast of an absent female body, or Tishan Hsus resin hybrids of faces and phone screens. These are among the shows best works, though I wish Alemani had gone all the way and included Matthew Barney: master sculptor of prosthetic-grade plastics, whose attention to permeable bodies and fluid identities prefigures almost all this shows obsessions.

Then theres the automatic drawing and writing, sances, spiritual channeling. We have the Victorian mystic Georgiana Houghton communicating with the dead through tangled watercolors; the dense symmetrical fantasies of Minnie Evans, in which human eyes gaze out from butterfly wings. Mediums and faith healers. Spiraling vines, blossoming flowers. This all gets picked up, among contemporary artists, by Emma Talbots sentimental painting on fabric of starbursts and babies in amniotic fluid, Firelei Bezs rebarbative murals of DayGlo Afrofuturist deities, or else beaded flags depicting animal-human hybrids by the Haitian artist Myrlande Constant. I clocked at least three artists drawing vines and tendrils sprouting from nipples or genitalia.

How much you can tolerate all this will depend on your own particular attunement to the music of the spheres. For my own disenchanted part (and especially as war rages), I have serious misgivings about the escapism of this magical thinking, as if, with just a little more respect for the divine feminine, everything will be all right. You cant take a break from modernity, not even in your dreams a lesson underscored in this Biennale by the quick-witted Inuk artist Shuvinai Ashoona, who draws seals, whales and octopuses in the drab apartment blocks and municipal buildings of the contemporary Indigenous Arctic. And the most compelling projects in The Milk of Dreams delve right into the incompleteness and instability of the modern world, rather than trying to get back to the garden.

In the Giardini, Alemani has choreographed a brilliant succession of five galleries that turn to gender and computing technologies, and how art might reveal our algorithms powers and misapplications. They begin with Wiggens new large irises, as well as strange and fascinating paintings she made in the 1960s of networked circuits and motherboards. (The word computer, after all, referred initially to predominantly female clerical laborers.) Next we encounter Italian female Op artists Nanda Vigo, Grazia Varisco and four others who put rational forms to eye-bending ends.

After them come two incisive women who reformatted drawing and painting for the computer age. One is Vera Molnr, who in the 1970s drew minimal compositions by outputting code to an early computer plotter (and whos still working from a Paris nursing home at 98). The other is Jacqueline Humphries, whose dense abstractions of halftone dots and emoticons reaffirm painting as an ideal medium of digital perception.

One of the art worlds favorite recent catchphrases is alternative knowledge, cribbed from anthropology and misapplied to just about anything that defies rational expectations. A dream may be beautiful, a dream may be powerful, but a dream is no kind of knowledge at all. A better sort of alternative knowledge is the knowledge imparted by art, at least at its most ambitious: the pulse-racing insight into our human condition we suddenly perceive when forms exceed themselves and feel like truth. The best artists in this determined, imbalanced, and properly historic Biennale look right at that human condition, with unclouded eyes.

59th Venice Biennale: The Milk of DreamsThrough Nov. 27; labiennale.org.

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Looking Inward, and Back, at a Biennale for the History Books - The New York Times

For the eighth time in franchise history and the first time since 2019, the Milwaukee Bucks will face off against the Boston Celtics in the NBA Playoffs. Before Game 1 of this highly-anticipated series tips off today, here is a look back at the playoff history between the two franchises.

In the seven playoff clashes between the Milwaukee Bucks and Boston Celtics in history thus far, the latter has won the series five times.

It started with a matchup in the 1974 NBA Finals when the Bucks were led by none other than the great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The former Finals MVP put on a display of dominance as he averaged 32.6 points, 12.1 rebounds, 5.4 assists, and 2.1 blocked shots per contest, while John Havlicek had a brilliant series for the Celtics by averaging 26.4 points, 7.7 rebounds, 4.7 assists, and 1.9 steals. Ultimately, Boston took down Milwaukee in seven games and Havlicek won the Finals MVP.

Following that series, the Bucks and Celtics went several years without seeing one another again before they met four different times in the playoffs in the 1980s. It started with a matchup in the 1983 Eastern Conference Semifinals, where the Bucks, led by an All-Star duo of Sidney Moncrief and Marques Johnson, emphatically swept the Celtics 4-0. The following season, Boston got their revenge over Milwaukee in the 1984 Eastern Conference Finals with a 4-1 series victory thanks to a sensational effort from Larry Bird, who eventually won the championship and Finals MVP.

Two years later, the pair once again faced off in the 1986 Eastern Conference Finals, but Boston proved to be too much for Milwaukee with a 4-0 sweep. Larry Bird was once again stellar in that series as he led the Celtics to yet another championship and earned another Finals MVP that year. The following season, the Bucks were out for revenge in the 1987 Eastern Conference Semifinals, where they took the Celtics to seven games thanks to an impressive team effort. Terry Cummings and Sidney Moncrief both averaged over 20 points per game, while Jack Sikma, John Lucas, and Ricky Pierce were all above 15 points in the series. Yet, the Celtics still prevailed as they had four players averaging 20 or more points for the series, headed by Larry Bird at 29.9, as they won 4-3.

After a surplus of playoff battles throughout the 80s, these two franchises went 31 years before they would see each other again. The seventh-seeded Bucks matched up with the second-seeded Celtics in a first round clash that went back and forth for seven straight games. Led by 23-year-old Giannis Antetokounmpo and a berserk Khris Middleton, the Bucks fell just short of taking down an impressive Celtics team as they lost Game 7 on the road. One year later, and the first year under coach Mike Budenholzer, the Bucks were set to battle the Celtics in the second round. After they lost Game 1 on their home floor, Milwaukee dominated throughout the rest of the series thanks to 28.4 points, 10.8 rebounds, 5.2 assists, 1.4 steals, and 1.6 blocks per game from Antetokounmpo and won the next four straight games against Boston.

Now, after seven prior playoff meetings over the years, the Bucks and Celtics will meet on the big stage once more. There is rightfully no shortage of hype surrounding the matchup, and it will be a must-see clash filled with plenty of star power on full display.

Be sure to catch Bucks-Celtics Game 1 today at 12:00 p.m. CST on ABC.

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Revisiting playoff history between the Milwaukee Bucks and Boston Celtics - Behind the Buck Pass

While spring breakers typically seek sun, Southwestern Michigan College students pursued a path less traveled for four days through Iowa, South Dakota and Wyoming.

Participants included Erin Burggraf, Ashley Herr, Gavin Smith, Kaleigh Conroy, Nathan Lull, Tristan Westrate, Sydney Franks and Isaac Pitsch with sponsors Joe Coti and Jeff and Chloe Dennis.

Snow fell on April Fools Day as the group left at 6:30 a.m. with a send-off by President Dr. Joe Odenwald. Four hours later they crossed the Mississippi River.

At Herbert Hoovers Iowa boyhood home, they viewed the two-room house in which Bertie was born in 1874, his fathers blacksmith shop and the Quaker meetinghouse dear to his mother. Orphaned at 9, Hoover lived with Oregon relatives, but always cherished West Branch and continued visiting until his 1964 death.

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Within walking distance, the 1962 Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum relates his boyhood, education at Stanford University, an overseas career in mining and engineering, his 45-year marriage, World War I efforts on behalf of Belgian orphans and food conservation, 1920s service as Commerce Secretary, his election as the 31st President and post-presidential career. Hoover was an American hero before becoming a scapegoat for the Great Depression, which crippled his 1929-33 administration.

I have been wanting to visit Hoovers historic site for four years, Franks said. Getting an opportunity to visit with the college was astonishing. Knowledge I gained about Crazy Horse and the Des Moines Capitol was eye-opening. My favorite memory has to be history nerds Joe Coti and me throughout the Capitol and Hoovers historic site. Thats a memory Ill never forget!

Saturday started with Dignity: Of Earth and Sky, a sculpture near Chamberlain. A stainless steel construction 50 feet high depicts a Sioux woman clothed in traditional dress, draped in a brilliant star quilt.

Its hard to choose which site was my favorite. I loved Dignity, Burggraf said. Her strength and beauty are truly remarkable. Crazy Horses museum and monument is a nation-building landmark that shows resilient Native communities continue to thrive even after so much loss. The Badlands has beauty all its own and is a vast reminder of how important Native communities are to our nation and culture.

The Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills is larger than Mount Rushmore and has been under construction since the 1940s. The face is now complete of the Lakota warrior who in 1876 led the Indian coalition that destroyed George Armstrong Custers force at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Learning about Native American culture while visiting the Crazy Horse Memorial was absolutely fascinating. Learning about the different aspects in Hoovers life and presidency was interesting as well, Conroy said.

Mount Rushmore, dedicated in 1941, arrays Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln and provided a backdrop for the 1959 Alfred Hitchcock film, North by Northwest, starring Cary Grant as a falsely accused man hunted across the country. A scene at Chicagos LaSalle Street station announces train stops along the route, including Dowagiac, Niles and Lawton.

Sunday they ventured into Wyoming. Devils Tower is a 1,267-foot butte with a 1.5-mile base. Native lore holds its crevassed surfaces were created by a great bear pursuing seven maidens who took refuge on top before escaping into the heavens to form the Pleiades constellation.

Its one thing to view images of a place you are studying, but another thing entirely to physically see them, Pitsch said. I can now better understand why places such as Devils Tower and the Badlands are viewed as sacred. I firsthand felt the powerful tranquility of being in their presence.

My favorite part of the trip was the Badlands, Lull agreed. Its unlike anything Ive ever seen. I enjoyed seeing wildlife up close. I feel I learned a lot about the culture of Native peoples.

This trip was like no other, Westrate said. I had never been to any of the states we visited. My favorite part was the drive through the Badlands. I love beautiful scenery. This was something Ill never forget.

On their final day in Mitchell, S.D., they took in the 1892 Corn Palace, a paean to Plains farmers. Each year, its faade is refashioned from various hybrids and colors of corn to a-maize-ing effect.

The Corn Palace was a bit corny, but a fun stop, Burggraf said.

In Des Moines they toured the 1886 Iowa State Capitol amalgamating Byzantine and Victorian architecture.

Cross-country runner Gavin Smith loved this trip, which made me want to continue to pursue my dream of running and walking across the country. This great adventure felt like a dream. I can honestly say this trip changed my life, showing the world as much bigger and more fascinating than I knew.

The history trip with Professor Dennis was an excellently-organized adventure with great people, Herr said. I thoroughly enjoyed all the destinations we visited and loved that we were able to make adjustments to accommodate things that piqued our interest. This trip sparked an interest in me to continue to learn more about historical events and to visit more memorable sites. I compare our trip to the Magic School Bus. We were being educated, but in such a fun, entertaining way we will never forget things we learned. I would highly recommend anyone who has the opportunity to take this trip or one similar to do it without hesitation. Its 110-percent worth it.

SMC funds a variety of travel opportunities to broaden students experiences. Some examples include SkillsUSA for criminal justice; the American Chemical Society, from San Francisco to Orlando; the American Sociological Association in Los Angeles this summer; and Chicago, from the Auto Show and Lyric Opera to psychology conferences.

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SMC History Students Tour Iowa, South Dakota, Wyoming - Moody on the Market

When it comes to selections in the 2022 NFL Draft, the Kansas City Chiefs are absolutely loaded.

The Chiefs have a whopping 12 picks in this years drafttied with the Jacksonville Jaguars for most of any teamincluding four picks in the seventh round.The draft can be a lottery at the best of times, even as high up as the first round. But with seven selections in the last round, will the Chiefs be able to strike gold? How have their previous seventh-round picks fared?

The Chiefs have an abundance of picks and there is a high probability that they trade away some of their seventh-round selections, but they are likely to have at least one.

Even though the odds of a late-round choice having a meaningful impact on the team are low, multiple players in the past have gone on to have meaningful, impactful careers in Kansas City.

The Chiefs selected guard Nick Allegretti in round seven of the 2019 draft, with the former Fighting Illini holding his own in the NFL.Allegretti started 12 games for the Chiefs in 2020, including KCs two playoff games and the Super Bowl.His role was greatly reduced last seasonhe didnt start a single game in 2021but he did provide Chiefs Kingdom with a memorable highlight, catching a touchdown in KCs 42-21 annihilation of the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Wil Card Round.

Ryan Succop is another name that Chiefs fans should remember, with Mr. Irrelevant in the 2009 draft playing spending five seasons in Kansas City.Succop is fourth all-time in points scored in KC franchise history, making 119 field goals and 100 percent of his 160 extra point attempts with the Chiefs.After his time in Kansas City came to an end in 2014, Succop spent six seasons with the Tennessee Titans and two seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

While Succop andAllegretti have had solid impacts for the Chiefs, some of Kansas Citys other selections didnt quite pan out.Thakarius BoPete Keyes,DaRon Brown,Mike Catapano,Junior Hemingway,Jerome Long, andShane Bannon are KCs other seventh-round picks since 2010, a group that didnt yield much NFL playing time.Of that bunch, only Hemingway played more than five games for the Chiefs, with the wide receiver appearing in 31 games with 25 receptions, 233 yards, and two touchdowns across three seasons.

But if we lookfurther back, a couple of other players were strong contributors for the Chiefs after being taken in the seventh round.Defensive back Eric Warfield was drafted by KC in 1998 and played in 115 games over eight years with the Chiefs. Warfield made 285 tackles and had 20 interceptions, including three returned for touchdowns.

Dave Szott is another name Chiefs fans might recognizethe offensive lineman was drafted in 1990 and started 136 of his 142 games in Kansas City over 11 seasons.

And last but certainly not least, Hall of FamerBobby Bell was drafted by Kansas City in the seventh round in 1963.Bell won Super Bowl IV with Kansas City and his illustrious career saw him elected to the NFL Hall of Fame, the College Football Hall of Fame, and the Chiefs Hall of Fame, with KC retiring his number 78.The nine-time Pro Bowler and six-timeFirst-Team All-Pro played 168 games across 12 seasons with the Chiefs.Bell recorded 40.0 sacks and 26 interceptions, with six returned for touchdowns. He even returned a kickoff for a touchdown, too.

It can be easy for fans to become attached to any player their team selects in the draft, but who knows? One of Kansas Citys seventh-round picks this year could go on to reach the Hall of Famejust like Bell.

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KC Chiefs history in seventh round is a mixed bag - Arrowhead Addict

OTTAWA COUNTY, MI The Jenison High School Marching Band plans to make its legacy known across the country with its selection to perform during the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Weve got a long history of really amazing students in the band program, David Zamborsky, Jenisons band director, told MLive/Grand Rapids Press. This is a big thing appearing on national television.

Zamborsky learned his students would take part in the 2023 edition of the parade the first week of March. But he had to wait to share his excitement.

Related: Jenisons marching band picked for iconic Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade

Macys does a really great job at keeping things as tight as possible, he said of the announcement. That was very much the case this morning.

The morning of Friday, April 29, marching band students were excused from class for what they thought would be a special event. Students took their seats inside the performance center and eagerly awaited the news.

As Wesley Whatley, the parades creative manager, took the stage, students began questioning amongst each other on what was happening, but they slowly started to figure it out.

The kids could tell it was a big deal, Zamborsky recalled. They were super excited when Wesley made the announcement.

With him, Whatley also brought a check for $10,000 that will go entirely toward the trip.

The journey to New York City where the annual parade is held started in January when Zamborsky began compiling his bands resume and achievements together to be considered as an entrant.

Now, after being named one of six marching bands across the country to perform on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, Nov. 24, officials say the real planning begins.

Macys wants every band performance to be memorable and unique, Zamborsky said.

For 90 seconds, the Jenison marching band will have the attention of viewers from all parts of the United States. Being on national television may sound intimidating to some, but for this group of students, its a once-in-a-life opportunity.

The fun part in all of this is going to be what we want to do and what we want to play, he said.

In the next 18 months, Zamborsky and his students will be busy to say the least. Taking around 150 to 200 students to New York, for several days, isnt cheap. In order to fund the trip, Zamborsky said fundraisers will help raise money to ensure no student misses this opportunity.

Being selected, it shows the legacy that our students leave behind here, he said.

This years parade is set to begin at 9 a.m. Thanksgiving Day.

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Erosion is a theme of the Pines, with its wind-tortured dunes and combustible wood buildings. But Bobby Bonanno, 65, who works as a hairdresser in Bellport, N.Y., and has visited the Pines for more than four decades, was concerned about the erosion of memory. To protect the heritage of the Pines, the affluent, largely L.G.B.T.Q. hamlet near the center of Fire Island, he decided to create the Fire Island Pines Historical Preservation Society.

Its become my passion project, he said of the historical society he founded in 2010, because a lot of these young people who come here to party most taking the ferry from Sayville on the South Shore of Long Island they have no idea that gay men in the 40s or 50s were handcuffed to poles here when cops came over for night raids. The police would take the men back to Sayville and jail them, Mr. Bonanno said. And if your name was published in the paper, you were ruined.

He does not want to depress young people and tries to make even grim history palatable by collecting photographs and documents and conducting interviews, which he posts on the website that is the historical societys principal venue. He tells the story of how in the first half of the 20th century, the Pines had a Coast Guard lifesaving station and was known as Lone Hill. Those who crossed over from the mainland were not infrequently nudists.

The first iteration of the Pines was a family-oriented community planned in 1952 by the Home Guardian Company on land it had owned since the 1920s and divided into 122 relatively big lots (at least compared to the property on other parts of Fire Island). The gestalt shifted when a succession of gay business owners took over the tiny commercial area near the deepwater harbor, creating lodgings and a famed, boozy dance club called the Pavilion. They also brought over artists, writers, entertainers and fashion industry folk with them.

The Pines evolved into a gay Shangri-La that granted exuberant freedom to men and women taking a vacation from their closeted lives. When the AIDS epidemic emerged in the 1980s, it failed to destroy that spirit. Instead it spurred organizations like Gay Mens Health Crisis to action, funded by money raised at parties held at all hours of the night and day.

Recently, Mr. Bonanno developed a walking tour of the exteriors of Pines beach houses, a 90-minute stream of anecdotes about visiting celebrities like Bette Midler and the artist David Hockney; groundbreaking architects like Horace Gifford and Andrew Geller; orgies (no names provided); and conflagrations like the one that destroyed the Pavilion in 2011 (it was later rebuilt).

On a sunny day in April, he led a reporter, her husband and a photographer on his Walk Through History along undulating boardwalks lined with bamboo hedges and scrubby evergreens, pausing at 43 sites to dish.

The tour began at the eastern end of the Pines, near the intersection of Ocean Walk, which parallels the shoreline, and Sail Walk, one of the paths heading south to the Atlantic. Down the beach was where Talisman, a 12-acre resort founded by the Broadway producer Michael Butler and Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, swung in the early 60s until the National Seashore, empowered by the Wilderness Act of 1964, seized it through eminent domain and largely returned it to nature. You can still see remnants of the Japanese-inspired buildings, Mr. Bonanno said.

At 443 Sail Walk (stop No. 5), he introduced the Pyramid House, an angular edifice with a trio of pointy-roofed guesthouses. The building was designed by an Argentine architect named Julio Kaufman (who would go on to lose an arm in a seaplane accident) for John Goodwin, a nephew of J.P. Morgan. In 2001, the writer Paul Rudnick bought it and commissioned a full-throttle reconstruction from the architect Hal Hayes.

The vintage photos in Mr. Bonannos handout show a glass curtain wall facing the ocean that is no longer visible from the repositioned entrance, but Mr. Bonanno has seen the beautiful view with his own eyes. Ive been in the house, he said. It gets hot.

As Pyramid House made clear, there was no shortage of visionary architects building in the Pines, and no compunction about messing with anyone elses work. The typical 1950s Pines house, Mr. Bonanno said, was a modest, one-story beach house, and in the absence of regulations, many have been torn down and replaced with bigger, gaudier structures.

Some properties got off lightly. Still recognizable is the Kodak House at 482 Tarpon Walk (stop No. 10), designed in the mid-1960s by Mr. Gifford for his own use. The subject of a 2013 book by Christopher Rawlins called Fire Island Modernist: Horace Gifford and the Architecture of Seduction, Mr. Gifford added theatricality to the mission of modern architecture, making inside and outside flow together. According to Mr. Rawlins, the house takes its name from its resemblance to the Kodak Instamatic cameras of the 1970s.

If Pines houses were not born with names, they often acquired them over time, and sometimes received more than one. The house with a very wide gable at 413 Ocean Walk (stop No. 14) was originally clad in yellow siding and called Mustard House. Then it became known as Cape Cod House and also Pizza Hut. In 1989 and 1990, it was the site of Morning Parties (continuations, really, of the previous nights revels) that benefited Gay Mens Health Crisis. When drugs appeared on the scene and the swimming pool collapsed, G.M.H.C. cut its ties and the party moved to other venues, Mr. Bonanno recounted.

At 410 Ocean Walk (stop No. 16), a two-bedroom, weathered cedar house with a wraparound balcony, the main distinction was that it was rented by the actors Montgomery Clift and Diahann Carroll, at different times. Both celebrities were supportive of the community, Mr. Bonanno said; Ms. Carroll took a particular interest in planting the dunes with beach grass.

The Pines attracted not just Hollywood A-listers but also their former spouses, and Mr. Bonanno made sure the exes received their due. Joan McCracken, the dancer and actress who was the second wife of the film director Bob Fosse and a model for Holly Golightly in Truman Capotes novella Breakfast at Tiffanys, lived at 458 Ocean Walk (stop No. 7). Mr. Capote wrote the book in the vicinity, and Ms. McCrackens first husband, the dancer and writer Jack Dunphy, was his longtime romantic partner.

And 403 Ocean Walk (stop No. 21), belonged to Susan Blanchard, the third wife of Henry Fonda (he had five, and she was also married for a time to the actor Richard Widmark). Tracking down photos of occupants of a sheltered community before the age of smartphones is devilishly hard, Mr. Bonanno said. But the historical society does have a letter that the Whirlpool Foundation sent to Mrs. Fonda when she bought a household appliance.

Apart from the hamlets many share houses, one of which, at 150 Ocean Walk, was used for Fire Island, a reality television series that aired in 2017 and still makes Mr. Bonanno wince when he recalls it (stop No. 34), the Pines has one multifamily residential complex. It is a midcentury modern development called the Coops with 100 seasonal units laid out on two acres along Fire Island Boulevard (stop No. 29). Planned as a hotel, the Coops brought electricity to the community, where there had been none before 1960.

At 142 Ocean Walk (stop No. 39), something looked amiss with the silhouette of the famous trapezoidal building known as the TV House until Mr. Bonanno pointed out that the exterior walls flanking the ocean-facing glass facade (the TVs screen) had been removed mid-renovation, leaving a lonely roof overhang. Somebody decided to give the house bangs, he said. (The original design will be restored.)

The penultimate house was 566-67 Driftwood Walk (stop No. 42), a curvaceous affair built in 1972 by a family called Sloan, sold to the fashion designer Calvin Klein in 1977 (he told Marc Jacobs it was one of the sexiest houses I think Ive ever owned) and then acquired by the music and film executive David Geffen in the 1990s. The house has changed hands several times since.

The tour ended at 557 Ocean Walk, originally the home of the Canadian architect Arthur Erickson and his partner, the interior designer Francisco Kripacz. Built in 1977, it is known as Lincoln Center because, like the Manhattan cultural complex, it is orthogonal and pale and has lots of glass. There was a retractable roof over the living area and a retractable ocean-facing wall in the back, Mr. Bonanno said.

The pop singer Roberta Flack once performed at a party at the house surrounded by hundreds of silver balloons and the smoke from dry ice. Today, it is owned by the cable star and former pornographic film actress Robin Byrd and alternatively described as the Byrd House.

Mr. Bonanno will lead A Walk Through History on Saturday, May 28, and Sunday, May 29, as a benefit for the Pines Care Center, which provides free medical services to the community. The price is $35. For information about these and other tour dates and to make reservations, go to pineshistory.org.

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Fire Island Society Aims to Preserve the History of the Pines - The New York Times

The Elitch Gardens that visitors see in downtown Denver today is quite a bit different from the park's humble beginnings in 1890.

DENVER Denver's Elitch Garden Theme Park turns 132 years old this week.

The historic amusement park visible to commuters near Interstate 25 and Speer Boulevard in downtown Denver has evolved quite a bit from its humble beginnings.

On May 1, 1890, John and Mary Elitch opened Elitch Zoological Gardens for the public to enjoy on their farm located on the outskirts of the city or what is now 38th Avenue and Tennyson Street. At the time, Denver itself had only been a city for 30 years.

Elitch's was one of the first zoos to open west of Chicago and held the distinction as the city's first botanic garden.

When John Elitch died unexpectedly the next year, Mary Elitch took over the business, and by doing so, became the first woman in the country to own and manage a zoo, according to the park.

There's an entirepodcast dedicated to Mary Elitch and her impressive legacy (she even found time to author two children's books). Known by visitors as the Gracious Lady of the Gardens," Mary Elitch continued living on the grounds until her death in 1936.

The Elitch Theatre opened in 1892, and in its heydayhosted the likes of Sarah Bernhardt, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Vincent Price, Grace Kelly,Lana Turner and Mickey Rooney. It continued to operate for another 100 years, but held its last production in 1991.

The historic theatre has since fallen into disrepair, and The Historic Elitch Gardens Theatre Foundation has spearheaded efforts toraise funds to restore it.

A businessman named John Mulvihill brought the garden from Mary Elitch in 1916. And in 1928, a hand-carved carousel which took more than three years to craft arrived at the park. It's still in operation to this day.

The ferris wheel was erected at the park in 1936 and the famous "Mister Twister" roller coaster arrived in 1965.

The Trocadero Ballroom opened in 1917 and quickly became a hip spot for dancing in the city. Visitors could see classic big bands perform for as little as a nickel. The ballroom was torn down in 1975.

A $94-million financing package allowed Elitch Gardens to move to its current location in 1994.

Big changes came in 1997 when Premier Parks, Inc. acquired the park and announced the addition of a water park. It was also at this time that the park released an improvement plan that included rides like The Mind Eraser, Tower of Doom and Shipwreck Falls.

In 1998, the park became "Six Flags Elitch Gardens." That lasted until 2007, when the park changed ownership again and reverted back to its original name.

The park introduced a spring concert series highlighting local and national talent of a variety of musical genres in 2001. That concept has since evolved into a summer concert series that's free to attend with park admission or a season pass.

In the last decade, the theme park has introduced rides like the Star Flyer, an extreme swing that takes guests to the top of a 17-story tower, and the water slide Mega Wega Wedgie, described as an "extreme speed slide tower."

In 2019, Elitch Gardens opened a "innovative, alluring and sensational new ride" called Meows Wolfs Kaleidoscape.

Santa Fe-based Meow Wolf would open a 60,000-square-foot permanent art installation called Convergence Station next door to Elitch Gardens in September 2021 at Colfax Avenue and I-25.

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The area where Elitch's currently sits could look a whole lot different in a few years.

In December 2018, Denver City Council voted to move forward on the River Mile Project,which will someday include below-market rentals, schools, retail and restaurants along a stretch of the South Platte River surrounding the theme park.

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