Thursday, February 16, 2012

Tinian delegation pushes anew for restoration of patients' free meal

The four-member Tinian Legislative Delegation is again asking the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. to restore the free meals for Tinian and Rota hemodialysis patients, saying that there are other areas where CHC could cut spending, including non-hiring of non-essential employees at this time.

The delegation is also requesting CHC to provide an “accurate description of [its] financial situation.”

Senate Vice President Jude Hofschneider (R-Tinian) said providing free meal to Tinian and Rota patients is a “miniscule obligation,” which he estimates at $50,000 a year that could be an equivalent of one employee's salary.

“We have a hard time believing that CHC does not have the money for the patients' meal when they continue to hire non-essential employees. We could understand if they are hiring doctors, but they continue to hire administrative employees,” Hofschneider told Saipan Tribune.

Hofschneider said after some Tinian officials made their formal request with CHC to restore the patients' free meal, the delegation also wrote a Feb. 7 letter asking the same.

“As of Feb. 15, we haven't received a response from CHC. They are still not restoring the free meal to these patients. These patients are not here by choice. If the services provided on Saipan are also provided on Tinian and Rota, they won't come here. Another thing we're concerned about is that CHC should continue to provide the meal because theirs is approved by nutritionists,” he added.

Hofschneider, in his one-page letter to CHC chief executive officer Juan N. Babauta, said although the delegation is cognizant of CHC's financial situation, they are “disappointed” by its decision to stop providing meal service to Tinian and Rota patients.

“Furthermore, it is displeasing to learn that while you have decided to cut this miniscule service and burden employees with austerity measures, you were still able to hire new employees and offer certain current employees a raise. These actions send a very confusing message to the Delegation and the [CNMI] Legislature, with whom you are requesting to assist CHC with its monetary problems,” he told Babauta.

Babauta issued a memo stating that meal services and bottled water for Rota and Tinian medical referral patients staying at the guest house will be discontinued on Feb. 1, 2012, and these services may only resume if funding is made available.

CHC was not able to pay on time its non-essential employees on Friday, and Babauta asked the Legislature to immediately approve an $11.58 million line of credit bill that will help CHC with its finances until it gets back on its feet. The House passed the bill on Monday, but the Senate won't have a session until Feb. 23.

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Tinian delegation pushes anew for restoration of patients' free meal

The Adventure is one step closer to sailing in the 2012 Schooner Festival, as organizers hope.

Tuesday, crews at the Gloucester Marine Railways on Rocky Neck pulled the restored schooner out of the water for some interior work. On Thursday, workers will scan the hull, clean it, and do some calculations for installing an engine, bulkheads and ballast, among other projects. Today and tomorrow, crews will work on removing the Adventure's masts and re-rig the ship.

"The Adventure organization is beginning 2012 at a rapid pace with our goal to have Adventure sailing in the 2012 Schooner Festival," said Joanne Souza, the organization's executive director.

Adventure won't be finished by then, but she should be able to sail, Souza said.

The Adventure is a 122-foot dory fishing schooner built in Essex in 1926. The restoration project, according to the Schooner Adventure organization's website, is more than 70 percent complete, and has beencarried out at a cost of around $2.5 million to date.

Steven Fletcher may be contacted at 1-978-283-7000 x3455, or sfletcher@gloucestertimes.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevengdt.

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Schooner hauled out for home-stretch restoration

13-02-2012 13:47 Hi, my name is Oxi Moron and welcome to my first ever YouTube broadcast. This live recording was shot on location in 'Perseverance Mill', in the shadow of India Mill's chimney, somewhere up North! I am no engineer. I just enjoy 'playing' with old and broken equipment which I attempt to breathe life back into. It keeps me out of the Pub, out of trouble and Mrs Oxi always knows where I am! If you would like any information on this project or can offer any tips or advice, please drop me a line. " We don't know what we can't do until we have tried! "

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1964 Edgar Westbury Vertical Milling Machine Restoration Pt.1 (Dore Westbury) - Video

13-02-2012 21:25 Quality Plus Construction

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Quality Plus Construction Roseville CA - Video

13-02-2012 21:31 Three bedroom double fronted, bluestone Victorian home, rich in renovation/restoration potential. http://www.fletchers.net.au

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Fletchers - 49 Osborne Street, Williamstown - Nick Fletcher

14-02-2012 08:56 She's all good now. Enjoy playin' her John A youtuber named John, said his girl friend's banjo was in their family and wanted to know if I could restore it. I don't restore banjos, but I told him to send it and I'd see if I could get it to play. The banjo belonged to John Reed Durham, born 1917 was a teacher in Kentucky. He inherited the banjo from family members, unknown, so the banjo is older than that, and as I understand it Sears stopped using the Supertone brand about that time. Anyway, I figured that by fixing the banjo I would not only be doing them a kindness, but I could answer questions people have asked me about how to fix and repair a banjo. Hope you enjoy it.

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John Durham's Supertone Banjo going home! - Video

CLAIBORNE PARISH, LA (KSLA) -

UPDATE 2:30 p.m.: Crews have arrived from Arkansas to assist CenterPoint Energy with the process of getting gas service turned back on for business and residential customers in Haynesville.

As of Noon Tuesday, the system had been "purged" of air and tested to ensure the repaired line contains only pure natural gas. That was "phase 2" of the restoration process.

Phase 3 will be going door-to-door to re-ignite the pilot lights at each service address and make sure there are no leaks.

That process is expected to take be lengthy, as crews will need to make sure there are no leaks or problems with re-connecting service at each of the 1,114 addresses.

Right now, CenterPoint Energy says they are focused on restoring natural gas service to the impacted customers and getting things back to normal for them as safely and as quickly as possible. But, in a statement released early Tuesday afternoon, the company confirms, "We will conduct an investigation into how and why this occurred and will seek to recover our costs, if appropriate."  

UPDATE 10:30 a.m.: Haynesville Police Chief Anthony Smith says 1,114 gas meters were affected by the outage.

Crews repaired the leak about 1:30 a.m. but the town still is without gas service. CenterPoint called in 50 trucks from E. Texas and Arkansas.

Crews expect to start turning the gas back on and relighting pilot lights at homes and businesses around noon Tuesday, but critical facilities such as the hospital and nursing homes will be considered a priority.

Workers will need to go into homes and businesses to perform relights. If no one is home, a yellow slip will be left at the home and the relight will have to be rescheduled.

By 3 p.m. Tuesday, the town should know if they'll have to suspend school on Wednesday. 

UPDATE 8:30 a.m.: Crews with CenterPoint Energy have begun Phase One of their plan to restore power to the town of Haynesville.

After an early morning meeting at the Claiborne Parish Fair Building, crews have started to turn the gas valves off at all homes and businesses in the town.

KSLA News 12 is in Haynesville at this hour following the progress of the work. On KSLA News 12 at 9, we'll have more on the restoration process plus speak with CenterPoint Energy about how things are progressing. You can watch KSLA News 12 at 9 online at ksla.com. Click here to watch the program.

We'll continue to have updates throughout the day on ksla.com.

UPDATE 6:45 a.m.: School officials say all Haynesville schools will be closed Tuesday due to the gas outage.

CenterPoint Energy also says some Haynesville residents should have their gas service restored as early as Tuesday evening, the latest time estimate of when all gas service should be restored is Wednesday.

Center Point Energy Spokesperson Alicia D. Dixon says most Haynesville residents will not have gas service any sooner than midday Wednesday. Center Point Energy officials say the outage was caused when a piece of equipment hit a Center Point Energy natural gas line disrupting service.  

Haynesville Police Chief Anthony Smith says Arkla Gas mega crews and Center Point Energy crews along with crews from Arkansas, East Texas and other parts of Louisiana are working to locate the gas leak. Both crews will have to work to turn every meter off in the city including businesses. Smith says this is for precaution. The crews are setting up a command center in the city.

"CenterPoint Energy has begun the process of turning off the flow of gas to each customer's natural gas meter," says District Director for Center Point Energy Eric Barkley. "We will then work to ensure that the natural gas distribution lines are clear of air. Once the lines are clear, we will begin the process of going meter to meter to restore gas service to each customer." 

Smith says both Arkla Gas and Center Point Energy crews will have to work to turn off 3,000 to 5,000 gas meters.

"When we begin the process of relighting, we'd like to ask that customers be at home if possible so our employees can go inside to restore natural gas service. A customer needs to call us only if there is a door hanger at their home or business indicating that we've already been by to attempt to restore service. Please call the number on the door tag left by our service personnel," says Barkley.  

Smith says the city lost all gas service at about 6:30 p.m.

For safety reasons, the company urges customers not to turn any valves or tamper with the natural gas meter. Opening or turning any valves could allow air to enter the natural gas lines, which would hinder the re-pressurization process.

KSLA News 12 will have more details on this story as they become available.

Copyright 2012 KSLA. All rights reserved.

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UPDATE: Natural gas service restoration under way in Haynesville

By MARY POLETTI

Herald-Whig Staff Writer

CLARKSVILLE, Mo. -- Richard Cottrell is living in a time capsule, a fact that overwhelms even him sometimes.

"Sometimes, when I come down from upstairs in the morning, I look around and I can't believe this is my house," Cottrell says.

At such moments, though, there are reminders of reality -- such as the distinctly 2011 dog toy lying discarded on the floor of a pristine, ornately decorated 1860s ladies' parlor.

As owner, curator and inhabitant of the Elgin/Cottrell House on the Clarksville riverfront, Cottrell shares his mid-19th-century mansion not only with his beloved beagle, Sissy, but also with tourists from all over the Midwest and historic preservation enthusiasts from all over the country.

The Elgin/Cottrell House will be featured in the March issue of Victorian Homes magazine, a national publication, for the second time in less than a year. It previously was the subject of a 12-page spread in the magazine's June 2011 issue.

Built in 1845 and expanded in 1860, the home has been lovingly restored and decorated in what might have been the 1860s splendor of a Southern plantation home, albeit on the banks of the Mississippi River in a slave state that never formally seceded from the Union during the Civil War.

Cottrell's is an interpretive restoration, derived from the study of books, magazines and other materials on what a home in the antelbellum period might have resembled. It's somewhat rare in that it incorporates not only 19th-century furniture, but also scores of beautiful antiques as decorative items, most from the 1860s and most collected in Cottrell's many years as an antiques dealer.

Although there are numerous historic homes open for tours in Northeast Missouri, the Elgin/Cottrell House is the only one in the quaint historic enclave of Clarksville, which prides itself on its image as an eclectic step back in time.

It's also something more personal to Cottrell, who grew up dreaming of calling a Southern plantation home his own.

"My vision is more Southern than this part of the world," he says. "My first love of historic homes was when I saw ‘Gone With the Wind for the first time. I wanted a house like that."

Although the Elgin/Cottrell House isn't quite Tara, nor were the Elgins quite the kin of Scarlett O'Hara, their heritage is rooted deeply in that of the nation.

Hazekiah Elgin, who owned the house, was a descendant of a Mayflower pilgrim, of a Revolutionary War soldier, of a cousin to John Adams. He came to Missouri in 1817 to claim a land grant from then-President James Monroe. Although Elgin prospered as a trader, with a trading post and his own riverboat, he came into far greater wealth when he married a widow who owned 25 slaves and 125 acres of land, along with personal wealth totaling $100,000 in 1860 dollars.

The Elgin home likely would have been palatial, Cottrell says.

"Mr. Elgin had a riverboat parked out front, and he had access to all the ports of the world," he says. "He could have had fine things like these."

The house stayed in the Elgin family for more than a century, until 1949. After changing hands a few more times, it became Cottrell's in 2006.

A Clarksville native, Cottrell already had lived in and restored five other houses. A former schoolteacher and florist, he was the curator of Hannibal's Garth Mansion in the late 1970s and early 1980s, planting the house's well-known rose garden and hosting Christmas tours. He also owns Richard's Great Stuff antiques shop on the historic Clarksville strip. But he had long dreamed of owning a museum house, ever since visiting Natchez, Miss., as a college student.

The Elgin legacy would be his final project, Cottrell decided.

"I figured this would be my swan song, so I went all out," he says. "I did a lot of things I never was able to afford before."

Cottrell spent three years restoring the house, living in it only on the weekends because of its lack of modern amenities, before he moved in full time in 2009. He refers to it now as a living restoration because it has modern bathrooms and a modern kitchen, although most of the house is period-appropriate -- complete with its lack of modern heating and cooling.

The Elgin/Cottrell House has had about 3,000 visitors in the years since its newest owner opened it to the public, and Cottrell received a bit of a boost and a lot of response from an unlikely step into the national home restoration spotlight last year.

A crew from Victorian Homes was photographing a historic house in the Chicago area and rented furniture for the shoot from an antiques shop owned by a friend of Cottrell's. When the crew asked whether there were any other homes in the region that they could document while they were there, the friend suggested they call Cottrell.

A writer and photographer visited last spring, and 12 pages of tribute to Cottrell's swan song appeared in print in June. And that was only for the first floor, with its formal dining room and traditional men's and ladies' parlors.

A follow-up in the March issue will take a closer look at the bedrooms, which feature such loving and unusual touches as a 19th-century rocking horse and a collection of Victorian wedding veils.

As Cottrell stands in the middle of his time capsule, he knows there's something special about his Southern house in the North, even among other historic homes. He's heard that from plenty of visitors, he says.

"Mine is their favorite because it has so many beautiful things," he says of some visitors. "They've seen houses bigger and prettier than this, but they don't have the treasures this one has."

-- mpoletti@whig.com/221-3385

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Quincy Herald-Whig | Illinois & Missouri News, SportsUnique restoration efforts in 1840s house land Clarksville man in ...

WEST TOLEDO, OH (WTOL) – Work to clean up the Ottawa River in Toledo has entered a new chapter. On Tuesday, plans to restore the portion of the river that flows through the University of Toledo's campus were unveiled to the public.

Nearly three-quarters of a mile of the Ottawa River runs through the middle of UT's campus. For two years, a commission has been working to create a restoration plan using several grants.

"It's to create habitat in the river for fish and aquatic organisms, the critters and bugs that fish eat," said Patrick Lawrence, Ph.D.

Lawrence is the commission chairman and said restoration efforts will make the river cleaner. It has been home to contaminated sediments along with a lack of fish and wildlife for years.

The commission brought in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to design a plan of attack. Their plan includes building a number of structures in the river and along its banks.

"We're trying to recreate what nature would provide. Again, we're using all natural materials: stone and wood," explained Lawrence.

Hans Gottgens, an ecology professor at UT attended Tuesday's presentation. Gottgens said his students use the river as a lab and have found more than 40 species of fish in it.

"People were really surprised to see how much life and how much diversity exists in this river. It was always considered a dead ditch, but it's not," said Gottgens.

Gottgens even said one species was on a state list facing extinction.

The goal is to save more and Lawrence feels the Corps' plan will help.

"It looks interesting, a lot of unique ideas and I think we're well on the path to getting this work underway," said Lawrence.

The restoration plans are expected to be finalized in a couple of weeks. The first changes in the river could be notable by August.

Copyright 2012 WTOL. All Rights Reserved.

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Restoration plan unveiled for portion of Ottawa River in UT's campus

On what would have been his 80th birthday, Feb. 26, the legendary Johnny Cash will be honored with the official ground breaking ceremony of the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home Project in Dyess at 2 p.m.

The Cash home is one of the few houses still remaining in Dyess. The restoration of Cash's childhood home began in January and is expected to be finished in June of 2013.

There is a lot of work that needs to be done before we can actually open the home up to the public," Ruth Hawkins said, director of the Arkansas Heritage Sites.

With the unpredictable weather and conditions of the gumbo soil, the ceremony will be in the Dyess Community Center, but there is an opportunity to drive past the Cash home and see the progress of the restoration.

During the ceremony the Cash family will make tributes, performances from the family; along with the status of the restoration.

The funding for the project came from the very first Johnny Cash Music Festival held last year at the Convocation Center.

"We raised $300,000 from the festival, part of the money is going to scholarships in Johnny Cash's name for students from that area, as well as money towards the restoration," Hawkins said.

As part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program in 1934, the town was originally built as an Agricultural Cooperative Project.

The main purpose of the town's administration was to give poor families a chance to start over.  The Cash family was one of 500 families to receive this chance, moving to Dyess in 1935.

The current status of the project is stripping away the paint of the walls inside.

"When the Cash family lived there, it had wood panelling that was milled on site in Dyess," Hawkins said.

With the help of photos and memories of relatives

of the Cash Family, Hawkins and her team have been able to make this restoration possible. When all is said and done the home will be an exact replica of the time when the Cash children lived there.

His family's economic and personal struggles during the Great Depression was the inspiration of many of his song fans know and love today. The project will not only be a tribute to 'The Man in Black,' but a reflection and illustration  of what life was like during the Great Depression.

The Arkansas Heritage Site is not only working on the restoration of the Cash home, but also have acquired the town theater and the administration building.

"After the completion of the theater it will be used as an orientation center for visitors, where there will be Johnny Cash films along with documentaries from the 1930s," Hawkins said.

The exterior of the administration building has been completed. Once the interior has been completed, half of the building will be leased out to the city hall. The other half will be a museum dedicated to the city of Dyess and the impact Dyess made on Johnny Cash's life.

"The overall vision for this project is to create a museum complex that tells the story of Dyess and Johnny Cash," Hawkins said.

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Cash Home Project to hold ground breaking ceremony on Cash's birthday