celebration

For nine decades after Bolshevik executioners shot Czar Nicholas II and his family, there were no traces of the remains of Crown Prince Aleksei, the hemophiliac heir to Russia’s throne.

Some said the prince, a delicate 13-year-old, had somehow survived and escaped; others believed he was buried in secret as the country lurched into civil war.

Now an official says DNA tests have solved the mystery by identifying bone shards found in a forest as those of Aleksei and his sister Grand Duchess Maria.

The remains of their parents, Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra, and three siblings, including the czar’s youngest daughter, Anastasia, were unearthed in 1991 and reburied in the imperial resting place in St. Petersburg. The Russian Orthodox Church made all seven of them saints in 2000.

Researchers unearthed the bone shards last summer in a forest near Yekaterinburg, where the royal family was killed, and enlisted laboratories in Russia and the United States to conduct DNA tests.

Eduard Rossel, governor of the region 900 miles east of Moscow, said Wednesday that tests done by an American laboratory had identified the shards as those of Aleksei and Maria.

“This has confirmed that indeed it is the children,” he said. “We have now found the entire family.”

Mr. Rossel did not specify the laboratory, but a genetic research team working at the University of Massachusetts Medical School has been involved in the process. http://louis-j-sheehan.net/
http://ljsheehan.blogspot.com/Evgeny Rogaev, who headed the team that tested the remains in Moscow and at the medical school in Worcester, Mass., was called into the case by the Russian Federation Prosecutor’s Office.

He said Wednesday that he had delivered the results to the Russian authorities, but that it was up to the prosecutor’s office to disclose the findings.

“The most difficult work is done, and we have delivered to them our expert analysis, but we are still working,” he said. “Scientifically, we want to make the most complete investigation possible.” Despite the earlier discoveries and ceremonies, the absence of Aleksei’s and Maria’s remains gnawed at descendants of the Romanovs, history buffs and royalists. Even if the announcement is confirmed and widely accepted, many descendants of the royal family are unlikely to be fully assuaged; they seek formal rehabilitation by the government.

“The tragedy of the czar’s family will only end when the family is declared victims of political repression,” said German Lukyanov, a lawyer for royal descendants.

Nicholas abdicated in 1917 as revolutionary fervor swept Russia, and he and his family were detained. They were shot by a firing squad on July 17, 1918, in the basement of a house in Yekaterinburg.



In the introduction to his biography of Boris N. Yeltsin, Timothy J. Colton lists more than 100 of the similes and analogies that have been applied over the years to Yeltsin, among them martyr and jester, Lincoln and Nixon, Alexander the Great and Ivan the Terrible, Hamlet and Hercules, bear, bulldog and boa constrictor. The wry list is an early signal that Mr. Colton knows he is treading into a subject that has inspired rival mythologies.

To some Western academics and more than a few Russians, Yeltsin’s role was almost wholly destructive. Interrupting Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s cautious reforms of the Communist Party and the Soviet state, Yeltsin smashed both institutions. He sold off the country’s resource-rich industrial heritage to a few moguls in a corrupt insider auction. His economic “shock therapy” plunged the country into a period of falling output and runaway inflation that Mr. Colton likens to the Great Depression. He unleashed the army against a mutinous parliament and waged a brutal, scorched-earth war against separatist Chechnya. http://louis-j-sheehan.net/page1.aspx

For years after Yeltsin crashed onto the political scene, the Gorbachev-infatuated West was overwhelmingly dismissive. Mr. Colton, a professor of government and director of Russian studies at Harvard and the author of a grand history of the city of Moscow, cops to being one of those early dismissers. But he declares up front that his research brought him around to the view that Yeltsin, while flawed and enigmatic, was a hero.

“As a democratizer,” Mr. Colton writes, “he is in the company of Nelson Mandela, Lech Walesa, Mikhail Gorbachev and Vaclav Havel. It is his due even when allowance is made for his blind spots and mistakes.”

Mr. Colton is not the first to undertake Yeltsin’s redemption. Leon Aron’s “Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life” took up the case for Yeltsin in 2000, as his presidency was petering out, and his popularity was at a low ebb. But Mr. Colton has used the extra time to excellent effect. He has mined declassified Kremlin transcripts; fact-checked many memoirs; conducted extensive interviews with participants, including Yeltsin, shortly before his death last year; and synthesized a story that anyone curious about contemporary Russia will find illuminating. And though this is densely researched scholarship, Mr. Colton writes a fluid narrative that only occasionally wanders into the briar patch of academic-speak.

Yeltsin’s grievance against the Communists began before he was born, in an all-too-common history of family heartbreak that Mr. Colton pieces together with a good deal of original reporting. The Yeltsins were dispossessed for the bourgeois crime of having built a farm, mill and blacksmithing business. Yeltsin’s grandfather died a broken man. His father was charged with the catch-all crime of “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” for grousing at his job on a construction site, and sent to a forced-labor camp for three years.

When Yeltsin joined the Communist Party, it was not out of devotion to the professed ideals but because a party card was a requirement for promotion to chief engineer in the construction industry. And when he moved into the hierarchy, he was already a man who chafed at party orthodoxy. No radical, he “nibbled at the edges of what was admissible,” Mr. Colton writes, pushing for market prices in the local farm bazaars, encouraging entrepreneurial initiative in the workplace, complaining that the top-down system smothered self-reliance.

In his moderation he was at first rather like Mr. Gorbachev, Yeltsin’s exact contemporary (the two were born 29 days apart, in 1931), his sponsor for a time, but ultimately his foil and nemesis. Mr. Colton nicely sums up the two men metaphorically: Yeltsin is feline, with an instinct for the great and unexpected leap; Mr. Gorbachev is canine, “trainable, tied to the known and to the previously rewarded.”

Mr. Gorbachev promoted Yeltsin to be Moscow party boss, but soon came to see him as an impetuous showboat. Yeltsin saw Mr. Gorbachev as a vacillating windbag, and made little effort to hide it. He infuriated his party leader by complaining about Mrs. Gorbachev’s meddling in Moscow affairs. They clashed in the Politburo over Yeltsin’s populist jibes at the privileges of party leaders.

The decisive break came in October 1987 when Yeltsin, in a disjointed speech to a (closed) party plenum, declared that people were losing faith in reforms and accused Mr. Gorbachev of tolerating a personality cult. http://louis-j-sheehan.info/page1.aspx

Mr. Gorbachev orchestrated a ritual humiliation and demotion, but half a year later the audacious outcast seized a more public moment — a conference of 5,000 party delegates — to repeat his broadside, assuring both his permanent estrangement from the party and his status as a popular hero.

Shrewdly, Yeltsin recast himself as the champion of the Russian republic — the heart of the Soviet Union — and campaigned for a seat in a new federal Congress of People’s Deputies. Mr. Gorbachev chose to enter the congress in an uncontested seat reserved for party leaders. His unwillingness to subject himself to a popular vote (which, at the time, he probably could have won) was, Mr. Colton recognizes, “a blunder of biblical proportions.” Yeltsin sailed into the parliament despite the Communists’ best efforts, and the tide of credibility had shifted decisively his way.

Mr. Gorbachev’s last gambit, shoring up the Soviet leadership with hard-line appointees, backfired when several tried to overthrow him. That ham-handed coup gave Yeltsin his famous tank-top photo op and his ultimate triumph.

Once he won the Kremlin, Yeltsin began drinking heavily. Mr. Colton concludes that while Yeltsin’s drinking was a distraction and an embarrassment, it did not critically influence his decisions as president.

“No sensible historian would reduce Ataturk’s or Churchill’s career to his drinking escapades,” Mr. Colton writes, generously. The booze did, however, ruin Yeltsin’s health; he had at least four heart attacks before bypass surgery.

The last half of the book has Yeltsin confronting the blank slate of post-Communist Russia. His three highly improvisational terms as Russian president were marked by periods of political gridlock, government by decree and constant intrigues, including a near-impeachment. His crash economic program, which Russians joked was all shock and no therapy, was meant to unleash entrepreneurial energy. But it also unleashed colossal avarice and corruption, along with five years of economic misery.

In defense, Mr. Colton writes, “By the day Yeltsin called it quits in 1999, the cradle of state socialism boasted a market economy of sorts,” inflation had been subdued, economic growth rebounded.
“Reforming the system from within, as Gorbachev meant to do,” he writes, “was a respectable choice. Heading for the exits was a cleaner and better one.”

Within this democratizer — whom Mr. Colton ranks alongside Mr. Mandela — there resided a deeply Russian and sometimes ruthless fear of instability. http://louis-j-sheehan.info/

He rebuffed entreaties from his liberal supporters to uproot the K.G.B. Indeed, in his appointments he often reached for young security apparatchiks, men he regarded as possessing “steel backbone.”

Most of these securocrats he discarded when he grew disenchanted or needed a scapegoat. But the last in the line, Vladimir V. Putin, endured and became Yeltsin’s successor because he captured public esteem and loyally stood by Yeltsin through severe tests, including the bloody crushing of Chechnya.

In retirement, Mr. Colton says, Yeltsin confided mounting disapproval as his protégé tightened the screws on the press and political opposition. No doubt — and Yeltsin can’t be entirely blamed for his successor (any more than Mr. Mandela could have foreseen how his hand-picked successor would disappoint South Africa). But Mr. Putin is doubly Yeltsin’s legacy. Yeltsin anointed him, and the persistent popularity of his hard regime owes something to the stomach-churning ride of Yeltsin-style democracy.





Researchers have identified two common genetic mutations that increase the risk of osteoporosis and related bone fractures, according to a study released Tuesday.

These changes were present in 20 percent of the people studied and highlight the potential role of screening for osteoporosis, the bone-thinning disease that mainly affects women after menopause, they said in the journal Lancet.

''Eventually, a panel of genetic markers could be used in addition to environmental risk factors to identify individuals who are most at risk for osteoporotic fractures,'' wrote Tim Spector and Brent Richards, researchers at King's College London.

Osteoporosis is a condition in which bone density thins as more bone cells are lost than replaced when people age.

It affects about one in three women and one in five men around the world, according to the International Osteoporosis Foundation.

Drugs called bisphosphonates are used primarily to increase bone mass and cut the risk of fractures in patients with osteoporosis.

These include Fosamax, produced by Merck & Company, which American researchers on Monday showed could increase the risk of a type of abnormal heartbeat.

In the Lancet study, the team scanned the genes of 2,094 female twins and identified a link between decreased bone mineral density and changes in chromosomes 8 and 11.

In chromosome 11, the change was associated with a 30 percent increased risk of the condition and related fractures, and for chromosome 8, the mutation raised risk by 20 percent.

For people who had both changes, their risk went up by 30 percent.

These two genes are important targets for treatments, and drugs are already under development, the researchers said.

President Jimmy Carter was the first President of the United States of America to have officially reported the UFO he saw to the authorities. He was also the President who said that if elected he would see that UFO-Alien Full Disclosure would take place. That the American public would be told the truth about everything was one of the campaign cries of Jimmy Carter. Carter made a promise he could not or would not be able to keep.

After Carter won the White House, he paid a visit to the then-CIA Director, George Bush. Carter had an interest in UFOs ever since experiencing his first sighting sometime in 1969 while standing outside a Lion's Club in Georgia. http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us/page1.aspx
His campaign speeches promising to unravel the government's long held cover-up was the "Parting of the Red Sea" for Ufologists not only in America but around the world. Here was the one guy who would open up the "Promised Land" and lead them into Full Disclosure.

Carter wanted the U.S. Government's UFO secret documents declassified. George Bush more or less told Carter that the President of the United States did not have the need to know the information contained in those documents. Can you even begin to imagine that? What lends even more mind-blowing credibility to this alleged event between Carter and Bush is the credibility of the allegation maker: Daniel Sheehan.

Daniel Sheehan was born in1946 and graduated from Harvard Law School. There, he was co-founder of the Harvard Civil Rights and Civil Liberty Law Review. He went on to work for the American Civil Liberties Union and became general counsel for a host of entities including The Disclosure Project-a group dedicated to getting the U.S. Government to allow full and unfettered access to what the Feds know about the UFO-Alien phenomenon.

According to Sheehan, Bush Senior, who was the CIA Director, refused Carter's request for disclosure of the UFO documents, even to the President of the United States, because it was generally believed in the halls and corridors of the secret, black-ops government that Carter would then turn the truth over to the American people.

Director of a California think tank, Sheehan's credentials are impeccable. Sheehan's career is a litany of high-profile cases like, "legal counsel team for the New York Times' Pentagon Papers case, defense of the Berrigan brothers, going after the Kerr-McGee nuclear plant (Karen Silkwood), Three-Mile Island, Iran-Contra. At the Disclosure Conference, Sheehan says the Bush-Carter story was relayed to him in 1977 by Marcia Smith of the Congressional Research Service, part of the Library of Congress."

Sheehan's interest in this phenomenon came about when Sheehan met Marcia Smith through a mutual acquaintance. Smith told Sheehan that she was involved in a research project for the Science and Technology Committee of the Library of Congress that would address the issues of the potential existence of extraterrestrial intelligence and make an evaluation of the data on the phenomena of UFOs. When Sheehan queried Smith as to who exactly wanted this study done, her answer was none other than Jimmy Carter.

This all was with a view to investigate exactly what could or could not be turned over to the general public, according to Daniel Sheehan.

Smith asked Sheehan if he could, since he was the then-General Counsel to United States Jesuit Headquarters at their National Office in Washington D.C., get access to the records on the UFO-Alien issue contained in the Vatican. Though Sheehan made repeated attempts to gain access to the Vatican's documents through official channels, he was refused each time. http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us/


This makes one wonder just why, if all there is to this UFO-Alien issue is weather balloons, flocks of geese, and swamp gas, would the Vatican (or any government on the earth, for that matter) have top-secret, and highly unattainable records pertaining to a nonexistent issue?

After telling Marcia Smith of his roadblock with the Vatican Library, she asked if he could help with a team that was lobbying Congressional leader to reinstate funds for the SETI (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence) program. Sheehan indicated to Smith that he was glad to help out. Smith also later asked him if he could help out with an investigation into "the potential theological religious implications of potential contact with extraterrestrial civilizations."

This again begs the question that if there's nothing at all to this phenomenon, then why this study?

Sheehan agreed to Smith's request but insisted he have access to the documents pertaining to this issue that she had garnered for an investigation she did for the Science and Technology Committee in Congress. When asked what exactly Sheehan wanted to see, he indicated he wanted access to "the classified sections of the Project Blue Book."

Astoundingly, Daniel was granted access.

He was not allowed to take notes, photos, or carry anything into the room containing the documents or out with him when he left the Library of Congress where the documents were stored. After proceeding through multiple layers of security, he was shown to the room with microfiche machines. Before entering, he was told he could not take his briefcase with him. Almost absent-mindedly, he had a yellow legal pad under his arm that wasn't confiscated before he entered the room. He proceeded through small canisters of film. It didn't take long to find proof.

He discovered photos of what appeared to be a disc-shaped craft. It had crashed.

"It had hit into this field and had dug up, kind of plowed this kind of trough through this field. It was wedged into the side of this bank. There was snow all around the picture. The vehicle was wedged into the side of this mud-like embankment -- kind of up at an angle."

The men taking photos were unmistakably, in Sheehan's mind, American Air Force personnel.

As Sheehan continued to review the film, he discovered a close-up of the craft that revealed symbols or glyphs written on the craft. He thought it was an insignia. He wanted to record what he saw, but remembered he was not allowed to take notes. He knew it was likely his legal pad would be discovered when he left the room and the guards would examine it to see if he had taken notes. http://louis-j-sheehan.org/
However, since he wanted those insignias, he had to find a way to record them. He decided to arrange the cardboard backing of his legal pad in such a way against the microfiche screen so he could trace the symbols. When he left the top-secret document room, he was searched. His pad was taken and flipped through for notes. Finding none, and not noticing the traced symbols on the cardboard backing of the yellow pad, it was returned to him by the guards and Sheehan left.

Sheehan not only revealed to Marcia Smith what he had found but he also revealed the information to his boss at the Jesuit National Headquarters. Meetings and conventions were convened on the issue. Reports were written. President Carter saw at least one of the reports made by Marcia Smith, which included information from Daniel Sheehan's discoveries.

Sheehan still has the yellow notepad with the symbols but says no analysis has been done on the symbols.

Oh, are you wondering about the reports Marcia Smith finished after Daniel Sheehan's discovery and what they said? Well, Sheehan read them and according to Sheehan:

"The one report that Marcia showed me on extraterrestrial phenomena actually stated that it was the conclusion of the Library of Congress, Science and Technology Division, that from two to six, at least, other highly-intelligent, technologically-developed civilizations exist right within our own galaxy." [sources]

"The second report," says Sheehan, "they had drawings of different shapes of UFOs that have been sighted," continued Sheehan. "They didn't site any particular cases, but they said that they believed there was a significant number of instances where the official United States Air Force investigations were unable to discount the possibility that one or more of these vehicles was actually from one of these extraterrestrial civilizations. They put this together, and sent it over to the President. I ended up seeing a copy of it."

The Carter Administration, though not bringing about Full Disclosure, had a very busy four years of UFO phenomena. I can't help but wonder if he had had another term in office, what could have come of all of this?





If there's a skill or process you want to learn or know more about, chances are there's an online video for it. These days you can find a video that will teach you to cook, survive college, build your own headphones or even become a better kisser.

This week, I took a look at just a few Web sites that make finding these videos easy, including Howcast Media Inc.'s Howcast.com1, WonderHowTo.com2 from WonderHowTo Inc. and eHow Inc.'s eHow.com3. Howcast.com, which launched in February, encourages users to make and share good-quality, entertaining videos by providing tools on its site, and has about 5,000 videos so far. WonderHowTo.com, launched in January, used a different strategy by aggregating over 110,000 videos from various sources -- including Howcast, YouTube and Scripps Networks -- rather than publishing its own content. EHow, a site that started in 1999 with text-only content, contains over 100,000 instructional articles submitted by its users or eHow editors, and has a small catalog of videos. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.us/page1.aspx


Howcast videos can be seen in full-screen mode using a player that illustrates step-by-step text instructions beside video screens.

After testing each of these sites, I found that my favorite how-to videos had steps that were clearly labeled and numbered and the ability to fast forward to or play back specific parts in the video -- tools that Howcast included in almost all of its videos. At least some of the videos on the three sites simply illustrate things you could likely figure out how to do without watching a video, such as "How to Make Green Beer." (Add food coloring.) Howcast.com and WonderHowTo both require users to sign in, which confirms their date of birth, before looking at what they consider "mature" content.

These three free sites are advertisement-supported, and Howcast's ads run alongside videos. WonderHowTo.com runs ads at the top and side of its own site, on which it will play certain videos. But because videos on WonderHowTo come from other sources, those other sites can show video-embedded ads according to their rules. EHow's videos run pop-up text advertisements displaying names and links of other related (and sometimes unrelated) Web sites. But I couldn't get the pop-up ads to stay closed.

Overall, I preferred the look of Howcast's site and its well-organized videos. But its content paled in comparison to WonderHowTo's 110,000 videos and even eHow's 100,000 instructional articles. WonderHowTo.com does a nice job of gathering content from across the Web, though the inconsistencies of other sites (including advertisements, layout and video player) were a bit frustrating. EHow's articles were useful, as were its few videos, but I couldn't get over the site's unyielding video pop-up ads.

Howcast.com's content was informative with an amusing edge, including a video titled "How to Tell If Your Boyfriend's A Psycho."(If he calls 50 times a day, for example.) Other videos on the site are more serious, like "How to Make Sushi" by an executive sushi chef in New York City.

The founders of Howcast Media formerly worked in Google's video department, including during the acquisition of YouTube. All of Howcast's content comes from one of four sources: written and produced by Howcast in its studios; emerging filmmakers who apply and are accepted into the Howcast Directors Program to receive $50 a video and 50% of the advertising revenue generated from videos that generate over 40,000 views on the site; content partners like Popular Science; and Howcast users' personal how-to videos.

In order to make it easier for average users to upload better-looking videos, Howcast provides an Upload and Enhance tool that simply and quickly adds professional-looking graphics and printable steps to go along with how-to videos. This formula makes videos more enjoyable to watch. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.us/


Videos made in the Howcast Studios include accompanying music, good narratives and actors who add humor to an otherwise humdrum how-to. Among its helpful features is a video player that has smart blue markers to show where facts are sprinkled throughout the video and green markers to illustrate where tips appear. For example, the fact at the end of a video for beginner guitarists called "How to Play a Basic Bar Chord" is "The late Kurt Cobain claimed he was trying to rip off the Pixies when he wrote 'Smells Like Teen Spirit. '" In full-screen view, users can zoom in on any part of a video, and written-out steps and thumbnail stills of the scene appear to the right of the screen.

Howcast tries to run ads alongside videos that relate to the content. A video titled "How To Clean Your Dog's Teeth" has an ad for PetSmart Stores running on its page.

WonderHowTo.com was developed by a former television executive with the intention of using the site to produce its own video, like Howcast.com. Instead, WonderHowTo.com opted to tap the vast selection of how-to videos already available on the Web.

A Browse button pulls down 35 categories from which users can sort content, including Spirituality, Dating & Relationships and Fitness. In the Fashion subcategory under Beauty & Style, I found 290 videos including one on "How to Tie a Windsor Knot" and another titled "How to Turn Old Underpants Into a Bra" -- neither of which I'll be using anytime soon. Other categories include Clip of the Day, Recommendations (for users who are logged in) and Fresh, where new videos are listed. Users can grade videos to help others tell which they think are the best, and a Top Grade category compiles the top-ranked videos.

WonderHowTo's content comes from over 700 sites, according to the company. I used the site to find a video on YouTube about how to do a front-flip, clips on VideoJug.com that provided terrific tennis tips from a coach, and a video from EasyBarTricks.com about how to stick a beer bottle to a wall without glue or gum. (Hint: You'll need a corner and a wall you don't mind marking up.) WonderHowTo made it easier to find these videos than by performing a general search on the Web.

I submitted a non-how-to video to this site by simply entering a URL, without logging in. I never found the video I submitted on the site; WonderHowTo explained that it screens all videos prior to posting them, so it must have found my video.

EHow.com uses its database of articles to encourage people to watch videos, when they're relevant. This site uses calm, pastel colors to give a relaxed feeling -- especially compared with WonderHowTo, where banner ads surround the page. EHow's 26 categories include Parenting, Parties & Entertaining and Weddings. Twelve subcategories within Weddings led to 23 articles about Bridal Party Responsibilities -- a popular topic was "How To Deal With a Bridezilla." Related videos, such as "How To Get Rid of Wedding Day Jitters," ran along the right of the page. http://louis-j-sheehan.org/page1.aspx



Videos can also be found on eHow within a marked tab at the top of the page. But unlike the articles on eHow, these videos weren't well organized or as easily searchable. I watched one of eHow's Featured Videos called "How to Know if Your Toe Is Broken," but after closing a pop-up ad for UPS during Step One of the video, another ad popped up during Step Five. Neither ad had anything to do with broken toes.

But the eHow videos were professional-looking and included quite a few tips that I didn't know. That broken toe video was submitted by the eHow Health Editor, and a link at the top of the page led me to hundreds of other health-related articles. I found another video on "How To Remove Wallpaper," which was posted by the Home & Garden Editor and included a list of things I would need to proceed, along with numbered steps.

It isn't always easy to learn from the information you find online, and how-to videos can be a big help -- especially when they're well-made and easy to find using one of these sites. Howcast.com has well-presented content that was enjoyable to watch, but WonderHowTo.com offers a better variety of instructional videos.








Kim Cattrall has played everything from a Vulcan in "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" to an Egyptian princess in 1987's "Mannequin," but her big break didn't come until 1997, when she was cast in HBO's "Sex and the City." Ms. Cattrall's portrayal of Samantha Jones in the series earned her five Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe award. This month, Ms. Cattrall, 51 years old, reprises the role in the new movie, "Sex and the City." She says her comic timing can be traced to her love of black-and-white screwball comedies. "I'm inspired by actresses like Lucille Ball and Marilyn Monroe," she says. "You can't teach what they do." She spoke with us about her favorite romantic comedies.

'My Man Godfrey,' 1936


In this comedy, Carole Lombard plays a daffy socialite who discovers a vagrant (William Powell) in the city dump and hires him as her butler. Before long, she is in love with him. "Carole Lombard is so glamorous," says Ms. Cattrall. "Every day she wakes up looking fabulous and somebody brings her breakfast. I haven't had breakfast in bed recently enough."

'His Girl Friday,' 1940

Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell star in Howard Hawks's remake of the 1931 newsroom comedy "The Front Page." Ms. Russell's character, Hildy Johnson, originally was written for a man. "She looked like a little guy, the way she would sit on the desk," Ms. Cattrall says of the performance.

'Sullivan's Travels,' 1941

Preston Sturges wrote and directed this film about a privileged Hollywood director, played by Joel McCrea, who decides the only way he can understand the poor is to pretend to be one of them. "Joel McCrea was such an underrated actor," says Ms. Cattrall. "I could watch that movie over and over just for his delivery."

'I Married a Witch,' 1942
René Clair directed this film about a witch who is burned in 17th-century Salem and returns in the guise of a 20th-century woman (Veronica Lake), only to fall in love with a descendant of the man who killed her. "It's supposed to be a comedy about love between a witch and a mortal, but really it's about accepting people as they are," says Ms. Cattrall. http://louis-j-sheehan.com/


'Woman of the Year,' 1942


Katharine Hepburn was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of a self-absorbed newspaper columnist who falls in love with Spencer Tracy's rumpled sportswriter. "My favorite scene is when Spencer Tracy comes to the office to ask her to marry him," Ms. Cattrall says. "The timing on that is impeccable."





Every winter, hordes of divers head to the congested, overdeveloped scuba-diving destinations of the Caribbean and the Red Sea. But there's a less-traversed option: Fly to Moscow, take the railroad 27 hours north, and drive two hours along snow-covered dirt roads to a village almost on the Arctic Circle, along an inlet of the White Sea. Then, take a snowmobile to a small black triangle cut into the ice.

Ice diving is one of the last great scuba adventures. WSJ's Mark Schoofs ice dives in the White Sea in Northern Russia and gives a peek into an underwater world full of sea creatures.

Ice diving is one of the last grand scuba adventures. Popular destinations include Antarctica, Newfoundland and certain lakes in the Austrian Alps. One of the best -- and least known -- is Russia's White Sea.

There, diaphanous, rainbow-tinged comb jellies (like jellyfish without the tentacles) float by. On rocks lie starfish and related brittle stars of every description. There are ophiuras, whose thin, spidery legs are striped wine-red and cream-white, and there are glittering, ruby-red crossasters with stubby legs, each tipped with delicate, filament tentacles. Luxuriant forests of large round anemones, each one ivory or pink-orange, look like some 1960s hallucinogenic art installation. Among them live multicolored sponges and algae, colonies of barnacles and tiny neon-lavender skeleton crabs. Wolf fish hide in crevasses. On the sea bed billow acres of low-growing kelp, whose undulation is as mesmerizing as a Bach fugue.

Above it all is the ice, almost alive, filtering sunlight into varying shades of emerald and gold. When one finally ascends back up through the ice hole, or maina, one literally ascends into light.

Marine life in the White Sea is so rich partly because cold water holds more oxygen than warm water, and in winter, the water is below freezing, about 30 degrees Fahrenheit. That means divers need gear -- lots of it. A dry suit, unlike the more common wet suit, is mandatory. With a zipper derived from a NASA design, and a seal on the neck, it keeps the body perfectly dry.

On my recent seven-day diving trip here with a Russian company, I wore three layers under a dry suit: a union suit made of polypropylene to wick away sweat, thick fleece long johns, and an even thicker Thinsulate-insulated undergarment that looks like a snowsuit. I wore two pairs of socks and Thinsulate booties, plus chemical toe warmers that react with air to generate heat. I used them on my hands, too, where I wore three layers of gloves under rubber outer gloves.

My head was in two neoprene hoods, a thin one underneath a thick one that tucked into a collar to protect my neck. A mask covered the skin around my nose and eyes. Only my lips, which held the mouthpiece connecting me to the air supply, were exposed directly to the cold water. Lips have such good blood flow that they don't go numb but merely tingle upon entry. http://louis-j-sheehan.com/page1.aspx
Donning all this gear, plus fins, tank, and the lead weights that help a diver sink, takes about half an hour. We suited up in mobile huts on skis, where gas heaters made me feel like a mummy working out in a sauna. Slipping into the cold water was a relief.

How to Get There: Aeroflot flies to Moscow nonstop from Los Angeles for around $900. Delta flies nonstop from New York for around $1,000.Then it's a flight to Murmansk, or a train ride to Chupa.
Book a Trip: Peak ice-diving season is February to April. In summer, there's no ice, but the scenery and 24-hour daylight are draws. RuDive starts taking reservations a year in advance (www.dive.ru/pages/page/show_lang/25.en.htm2). Early booking is advised, especially for groups. Standard tours go from Sunday to Friday. Custom trips can last longer or, as some Russians and Finns prefer, for a weekend.
Price: A week of ice-diving at the White Sea with RuDive -- including lessons, a room with private bath and train travel to and from Moscow -- is about $1,750 per person.

But the cold harbors danger. Valves can freeze, either blasting a diver with free-flowing air or shutting off the air supply altogether. Every air tank for ice diving has two valves, not the standard one for warm-water diving, and the mouthpiece valve has a freeze-resistant design. Even so, I encountered an emergency. I wore a vest that inflated and deflated to control buoyancy, and a valve on it froze open, ballooning the vest and sending me straight up. I was pinned against the ice, unable to swim freely, with the air in my tank rapidly flowing out. The safety of the terrestrial world was less than a foot away but walled off by impenetrable ice.

This is the second danger of ice diving: To ascend to the surface, one must return to the ice hole. Out of air and wearing close to 100 pounds of gear, even 25 yards underwater can be a long, even lethal distance. Each diver is secured to a rope connected to two other people: a buddy in the water and a tender on the surface. My buddy saw my trouble and gave the emergency signal: Four yanks of the rope, and our tender hauled us in. We skated along the ice's underside, a sensation so fun and beautiful that I forgot the danger. Up on top, our tender doused the valve with hot water from a thermos, and we resumed our dive.

Living so intimately with ice, one realizes it is anything but static. A brilliant sun shone during the first two days. But then a heavy snow fell, and when we went to the maina, the water seemed to have risen, forming a puddle on the ice. The weight of the snow had pushed the ice down, forcing water up through the hole. On another day, we were diving when a storm roared in. Our guides, concerned that large waves on the open sea would create surges capable of cracking the ice, decided we would leave.

Even without storms, the tides rise and fall more than six feet, so the ice at the shore continually cracks, refreezes and cracks again. Underneath, the constant friction sculpts the ice into breathtaking forms through which light streams as if through a kaleidoscope.

Topside, the muted light of a snowstorm or a sunset brings forth the full range of color in arctic ice: every conceivable variation of white and grey and a softly iridescent blue that seems to emanate from deep within. At night, the wind sweeps stretches of ice clean of snow, and they gleam obsidian black. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/page1.aspx

The underside of the ice is bubbled like a sponge, and in many of the holes live tiny crustaceans. Blow scuba bubbles, and they fall out like living rain.

Two former marine biologists, Dmitri Orlov and Mikhail Safonov, founded the outfit that organized this expedition, the RuDive Group, which offers world-wide scuba tours. In 1996, after the Soviet Union crumbled and science funding dried up, Mr. Safonov and Mr. Orlov began offering diving lessons, and in 1998 they began taking customers to the White Sea.

Five years ago, they opened their own diving center there, with comfortable wooden chalets offering accommodations from hostel-style dorms with shared baths to private rooms. Meals are hearty, often featuring local smoked fish, fresh vegetables and fruit and preserves made from local berries.

About seven years ago, Mr. Safonov recalls, a woman ice-diving with a predecessor company he and his partner founded and ran died in a Moscow lake at a depth of about 10 feet. The exact circumstances weren't clear, but spurred largely by the event, RuDive now requires all customers to have ice-diving certification from the Professional Association of Diving Instructors. Customers can get ice-diving certification at the start of their trip. RuDive has added to the standard training to enhance safety.

In 1999, Mr. Safonov participated in what is believed to be the first successful scuba expedition to the North Pole. The ice there forms underwater "castles," he says, and the water is as clear as air. Last month, he returned from RuDive's fifth successful polar diving trip. The cost: $40,000 per person.

RuDive's White Sea center has two captive beluga whales, owned by a Russian aquarium and held in a netted sea pen. The one-ton males circled in swift arabesques, then came straight at me, playfully biting my leg and fins the way a dog would. It was amazing fun, but the experience had traces of the amusement park. It was an escape from reality, not an immersion in it.

By contrast, the maina, its black water a portal between worlds, feels exhilaratingly real. When a snowstorm transforms the topside into a swirl of white, it's the perfect moment to slip into a winter of anemones and comb jellies and luminous green-gold ice.








If you were asked to list literary classics, it is unlikely that "Little Red Riding Hood" would be the first to come to mind. You might think of the Bible or Shakespeare, since they are the two most widely owned masterworks of Western literature. But, as novelist A.S. Byatt notes, "Grimms' Fairy Tales," which contains the popular "Little Red Riding Hood," is probably third. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz



Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected tales from folk sources, and published their "Children's and Household Tales" in 1812. To make the stories more literary and more appropriate for children, they made revisions throughout their seven editions, the last published in 1857.

These fairy tales deal with the same issues, such as love and death, as all great literature. They do so without hiding violence, hate, or even lust, making them quite different from most children's books of today. They set a standard for literary works -- Vladimir Nabokov was right when he said that all great novels are great fairy tales.

The stories are presented both concretely and magically, matching the child's manner of thinking. With their great emotional and moral power, and with their being first heard at an early age, they are more than literary. They suggest a model of living for the child.

"Little Red Riding Hood" is about a beautiful girl leaving home to visit her sick grandmother. The heroine starts down a path, carrying cakes and wine to make Grandma feel better. Along the way, she meets a friendly wolf who asks her where she is going. The charming Red Riding Hood all but invites him to meet her at Grandma's by pinpointing the location of her house. The wolf thinks, "What a tender young creature! What a nice plump mouthful."

The wolf persuades Little Red Riding Hood to wander off into the woods to see the beautiful flowers, to hear the birds singing and to enjoy the merry woods. This ploy allows the wolf to rush off to eat Grandma, disguise himself as her, and wait in bed for the girl. When she arrives, she questions the wolf about his appearance. And when she finally asks about his big teeth, he famously replies "The better to eat you with" and devours her.

Sated, the wolf falls asleep. Luckily, a hunter walks by, checks on Grandma, and discovers what has happened. He cuts open the wolf's belly, releasing Grandma and Little Red Riding Hood, both unharmed. Then Red Riding Hood springs into action herself and kills the wolf by piling rocks in his belly. http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.blogspot.com/



The fairy tale is fantastic, but that is necessary because of children's magical thinking. Their thought is illogical, impulsive and omnipotent. They are not surprised that a wolf talks or that two people can be retrieved whole from his belly. The little girl hearing the story does not simply identify with the little girl in the tale, as an adult might -- she becomes Little Red Riding Hood. Some parents argue that there is too much unreality in fairy tales. On the contrary, the narrative resonates with a child's notion of reality. These tales speak directly to children in their own language; by doing so, they exert their influence.

Another device in "Grimms'" is the use of absolutes. In "Snow White," Mother is divided into the entirely good queen who died and the unremittingly cruel stepmother who wishes to kill the girl. In "Little Red Riding Hood," fatherly attributes are split between the good protective hunter and the sinful, animalistic wolf. Since children themselves think in absolutes, a clean division of attributes makes it easier for the child to consider opposite qualities.

Violence and sexuality are, as the Grimm scholar Maria Tatar says, "the major thematic concern of the tales . . . at least in their unedited form." Rumpelstiltskin tears himself in two, Snow White's stepmother dances herself to death in red-hot iron shoes, and Hansel and Gretel are left in the forest to die. (If these scenes are unfamiliar, you have read a bowdlerized version. These "retellings" are to the Grimms what Cliffs Notes are to Shakespeare.)

But the Brothers Grimm cannot be blamed for introducing alien thoughts into the child's mind. The child has his own fears of and desires for violence before encountering the fairy tales. He will never experience the precise situations that occur in "Grimms'," but he does fear death and abandonment. He also has his own monstrous and destructive wishes. All this is obvious from even the most cursory observation of preschoolers' play. The genius of these tales is that they intuitively address such wishes and fears -- and allow the child to use the narrative to master them. Little Red Riding Hood not only survives the wolf's cannibalism but she kills him -- she has become a more assertive person.

Sexuality is subtle in the Grimms' telling of that story, but not in earlier versions. In one, a werewolf demands that the girl strip and get in bed with him, but she escapes. In the Perrault version of 1797, Little Red Riding Hood takes off her clothes and climbs into bed with "Father Wolf." In the Grimms' story, she virtually invites him to Grandma's house, where she is bringing treats that are ideal for a party. The "old sinner" delights in conversing with her, gets rid of Grandma, and waits for her in bed. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
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Why is sexuality present? One answer is that the stories are derived from bawdy folktales. A more compelling explanation is that the tales include it because children are sexual beings. Psychoanalysts have long held this view, which became popular through Bruno Bettelheim's tendentiously brilliant analyses in "The Uses of Enchantment."

Little Red Riding Hood is unconsciously working through her attraction to her own father, who is never mentioned in the story; instead, she becomes involved with the rapacious "father wolf" and is later saved by the protective fatherly hunter. In the end, she kills the wolf, thus renouncing her oedipal desires for her father. The child who hears the story has learned about the dangers of loving unwisely.

The dilemma for Little Red Riding Hood is the extent to which she must keep to the straight path. Thanks to her dallying in the woods, Grandma and she are eaten, but there is no overt moralizing. By the time the story ends, Little Red Riding Hood has not only taken action against the wolf but also makes a promise to herself to heed her mother's warnings, and thus is better prepared to avoid the wrong partner in the future. The Grimms allow the child to consider such issues unconsciously, without being subjected to a heavy dose of didacticism.

"Little Red Riding Hood," like the other great fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, ends happily -- but not with "they lived happily ever after." Red Riding Hood has more work to do; she is not yet ready for her prince.

For adults, telling the story to a child is the richest of pleasures. The storyteller revisits a classic and the vital issues it raises. He can marvel at the fascination of the child. But most important, the child's enchantment becomes the teller's too, and parent and child join to share that enchantment. It is one of those rare moments in adult life when one can recapture the magic of one's own early youth. http://louis-j-sheehan.us/
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Louis J. Sheehan Esquire